


They’ve All Gone to Look for America

by longwhitecoats



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Americana, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Winter Soldier, Road Trips, Steve Feels, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-01-20 07:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1501454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longwhitecoats/pseuds/longwhitecoats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve and Sam go on a road trip across America, see the sights, learn about mixtapes, make surprising friends, and fall in love a little. (Rating is for a brief solo scene at the beginning of Ch. 6.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve hit the road.

It only takes a couple weeks of asking questions in what are apparently all the wrong places before Sam begins to suspect that Bucky’s trail is already very cold indeed.

They’re sitting in a nameless parking lot out on some abandoned strip mall in north Jersey. Spring is in full force, which in this part of America means dandelions pushing through broken concrete and the smell of donuts carrying on the air. Not so bad; Manhattan smells worse, Sam knows.

Steve’s parked himself on a curb. He’s not saying anything, just staring out into the distance with a look so sad and heroic that Sam would swear it was an act if he hadn’t seen that stare get longer and more distant as the days have gone by. Number of Days Without A Bucky Incident: 18. And counting.

“Where we goin’, man?” Sam says, forcing himself to sound cheerful for Steve’s sake. “What’s the next stop?”

But Steve doesn’t answer. He’s been getting quieter, too, Sam realizes. His work as a counselor has taught him that sometimes people need silence, need to know they have the space to speak, and so he’s been giving Steve space, not pressing the issue. Even though it’s getting more and more obvious, as he looks at the tightness in Steve’s face, the constriction of his breathing, that somewhere buried in that great heart, there’s an issue to be pressed.

(Sam doesn’t think about pressing other things, either, because he’s a good friend and Steve doesn’t need that right now. Probably wouldn’t want that anyway. So he doesn’t think about it. Much.)

Finally Steve says, “You know, when I woke up, I went right back into service.” He glances over at Sam, quick and nervous, and Sam just nods, folds his hands. Listening.

“I thought I could just go back and serve. That it was all the same. But it wasn’t.” Sam snorts. That’s the understatement of the century. He’s heard Steve say all this before, of course; this is familiar ground. Maybe that’s what Steve needs to build from before he can say the scary thing, whatever that is.

He hears himself say, “What wasn’t the same?” in the voice that’s led countless meetings for the V.A.

Steve opens his hands and looks around: looking at the parking lot, the weeds, the crumbling strip mall, the highway.

“This,” he says at last. “I guess I thought I knew this place. I knew who I was going to bat for, when I enlisted. But now—how can I know what the right thing to do is if I don’t know who I’m fighting for?”

Sam considers this. He wants to say, _You have to fight for yourself first_ , and he wants to say, _You’re doing the right thing_ , but he senses that platitudes and assurances aren’t enough to fill whatever hole has opened inside Steve’s chest. It’s going to take something much bigger.

Much, much bigger.

He says, “Do you know that in the eighties, the government built highways that cover the entire country?”

Steve’s brow furrows. “You mean the forties. FDR was going to start building highways right after the war.”

Sam nods. “He did. But they were small. Look at that sucker out there.” He points at the turnpike nearby, where eighteen-wheelers and minivans and SUVs are zooming past at a terrifying clip. Gotta love Jersey.

“There’s enough asphalt in this country now that you could drive clean around it and never need to go off-road. If a person had a mind to, they could see the whole thing.”

That I-know-what-you’re-up-to look is back in Steve’s eyes. “If a person had a mind to.”

Sam shrugs. “Just saying.”

He waits for a good long time. Steve’s mouth twists up, and then he does the long slow blink that means he’s about to grin, and then he grins, full and warm.

Sam tries to ignore the way it makes happiness spread out all over his skin like sunlight.

“I guess we’re not getting anywhere right now,” he says. He stands, holding out a hand to Sam. “So let’s get somewhere.”

“All _right_ ,” Sam says, taking his hand. “Yeah. Let’s get somewhere.”

They start walking to the car.

“We’re gonna need supplies, though,” Sam says, already making a list in his head.

“Supplies?” Steve peers into the backseat, where they’ve stockpiled enough gear to take out a whole nest of HYDRA assassins. It gleams innocently. “That’s not enough?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m not talking about ammunition, Rogers, I mean _supplies_. We’re talking about Cheetos, a bunch of beef jerky, some cases of beer—“

“—I can’t get drunk—“

“—No, but I sure as hell can, and I’m gonna need to, the way you drive. Worse than my grampa.”

Steve ducks his head. “Jerk.”

Sam tosses him the keys. “Hey.” He tries to keep the affection out of his voice, tries to keep it cool, but his throat catches when he says, “There’s _nobody_ I’d rather ride with. You know that.”

“I know.” Steve’s smile is gone again, like the sun suddenly disappearing behind a cloud. Thinking about Bucky again, no doubt.

Sam sighs and gets in the car. “And one thing’s for sure,” he says, adjusting the uncomfortable seat for the hundredth time. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Steve turns the ignition.

Sam coughs.

“What? Was that another movie reference?”

“You told me you watched _Jaws_ already. You told me. Don’t lie to me, Rogers.”

“I told you I put it on the list. And did you just spoil the movie for me?”

“Just drive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a WIP, and since I have another fic going, I can't make promises about how often I'll update, unfortunately. But I hope you like it! No sex in this chapter, but we'll get there eventually.
> 
> The song that gave this fic and this chapter their titles is "America" by Simon & Garfunkel.


	2. Where you once belonged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve get wheels.

They argue over which maps to buy and how many snacks are necessary for the first leg of the trip. (Steve: “Just a few things.” Sam: “You’ve never had _Skittles?_ We’re getting every kind.”) They argue about whether to bring the gear on the road with them. (Sam: “I thought you were a boy scout?” Steve: “Their motto is ‘Be Prepared,’ not ‘Cross State Lines With Illegal Munitions.’”) But at the end of the day, they’re both soldiers, and they know how to roll out fast and clean, so they dump the gear in a storage locker, pack a few duffels, and head to a used car lot outside of Poughkeepsie.

It’s only early spring, but the sun reflecting off of a sea of metal makes the air feel hot. Steve is visibly uncomfortable as he walks the aisles. He’s peering into the windows of the cars, looking them up and down. Steve’s paying, so Sam wanted to let him pick out the car, though it occurred to him that Steve has almost certainly never bought a car before. But he thought it would be a learning experience, that Steve would have fun playing with the power locks and poking the stereos. Instead he’s just walking aimlessly, getting more and more worried-looking. The attendant comes over and tries to chat him up, and Sam stiffens, watching the exchange. Steve looks even more unhappy as the guy talks, if that’s possible; the salesman is clapping him on the back and throwing him knowing winks as he talks, all buddy-buddy and you-know-what-I’m-talkin’-bout, and Steve is clearly off somewhere in the grim fog of memory, lost in all that missed time.

Sam’s not a jealous guy even when he’s in a relationship, and he’s trying really hard not to be weird about his crush. So it surprises him to realize the uncomfortable sensation he’s having (he’s tapping his toes, crossing his arms: Sam has to watch his own body from outside, sometimes)—the feeling he’s having is that he wants this attendant to get away from Steve as quickly as possible.

“Hey, man,” he says, bright smile, jogging up to Steve. “Let me catch up. What’d I miss?” He glances over at Steve and sees his shoulders have immediately dropped in relief. “Sam. Nice to meet you.” He puts out a hand to the salesman, standing between him and Steve.

(Just for a moment, he feels something warm on his back; but it’s just sunlight, and then it’s gone.)

To his relief, the guy takes it. “Amar. Good to meet you. I was just telling—your friend—” he looks over at Steve, clearly not sure how to refer to him— “we have a sale on luxury vehicles today, so if you’re looking for something spacious...”

“Oh, big, definitely,” Sam says, “but tough. We’re gonna do some off road nonsense, you know what I mean?” He grins again, trying to keep things easy and cool. They’re _probably_ not going to go off-road. Probably. But if Steve feels the same way about roads that he does about rules, Sam figures it couldn’t hurt to have four-wheel drive.

“For sure,” the guy says. “Absolutely. Let’s go to the sports utility vehicle section. Follow me.”

Sam takes point for the rest of the conversation, and Steve just kind of _watches_ him with these big watery eyes, not giving input unless he’s asked, not asking questions. Even during the test drive, he barely talks. It isn’t like Steve at all. Something’s up.

It’s not until they go to pay for the car that Sam figures it out.

Steve tenses when he hands over the card. Of course Amar doesn’t ask for ID; there’s no question about who he is. But in his stiff spine and tightly-drawn mouth, Sam reads the same worry he saw on the faces of his family and neighbors for most of his youth.

Then the card clears. “You’re all set—um, gentlemen. Here are your keys, and there’s your paperwork. If you have any trouble, just give me a call.” Amar smiles. He didn’t bug Steve for an autograph or a photo, Sam thinks; that’s decent of him.

Outside, they walk around their gently used hybrid SUV. Then they load their stuff in, Steve opens the map, and Sam pulls out of the lot heading north, where the access road connects to I-84.

It’s a feature of hybrids, Sam notes, that they are very, very quiet.

“I’m sorry about—back there,” Steve says at last, eyes on his lap.

Sam merges onto the highway. “Hey man, you got nothing to apologize for.”

Steve just nods slowly, like he can’t hear Sam well. Fog really is the right word for it, Sam thinks. This has been his M.O. since they started their hunt. He thinks of something, almost always something about Bucky, or about the past, and it envelops him. He’s in a shroud of numbness.

The highway almost immediately blocks up in front of them; Sam figures he should’ve known better than to head toward Connecticut, but however bad it is, 95 has to be worse.

“So you were worried the card would get declined, huh,” he says, not taking his eyes off the road.

Steve’s head pops up, his eyes glistening in surprise. “Yeah.”

“It’s not your card?”

Steve does that nervous tic where he runs his hand through the hair on the back of his neck, and Sam really wishes (doesn’t wish, _studiously_ doesn’t wish) that he could do it, too.

“It’s _kinda_ my card. Fury gave it to me, I guess in case I needed to go on the run and buy supplies. Maybe even in case of something like this, where I left the nest entirely. I don’t really know. SHIELD always supplied whatever I needed for the mission. And before that, the army did.” He puts his head in his hand and looks out the window. “Sam, I haven’t _bought_ anything since 1944.”

And there it is. Sam remembers how upset Steve was in the supermarket, too, how he stared at the numbers on the LCD display as the cashier rang everything up. He wonders what it would be like to see a candy bar cost twenty dollars, to watch your buddy pull out a few hundred-dollar bills from his pocket to pick up a grocery store tab.

But Sam doesn’t have to wonder what it’s like not to be able to afford that candy bar at all, because he already knows.

“Steve,” Sam says, “if that money used to belong to SHIELD, then it also used to belong to HYDRA.”

“So it’s fine for us to blow on a new car?”

“A _used_ car. And come on, the army doesn’t owe you back pay?”

“Yeah, and it’s the army, so they’re still getting the paperwork through.”

“Steve.”

But Steve isn’t having it. “I don’t know about this, Sam. I never understood why so many people seemed to have money when nobody I knew had any. I had the same pair of shoes for five years. My feet burst the leather twice.”

“And you wanted to scuff up those shiny new Air Jordans that the kid in your English class kept showing off, because you knew you weren’t getting any for Christmas, no matter how bad you wanted ‘em. I know.” Steve’s looking at him now, and Sam wishes he could turn his head, but he has to keep his eyes on the merge until they get through the construction. “Times haven’t changed _that_ much, man. We still got poor people. More of them now than there were ten years ago, in fact. And the rich people act like it’s not their problem.”

“That’s not right.”

Sam shrugs. “That’s America.”

Steve sits back in his seat and crosses his arms. “I guess it is.” He frowns. “I don’t want to be one of those people, Sam. It is my problem.”

Sam thinks about this. A construction worker waves them past the blockage, and does a double-take as they pass him by. Sam smiles and waves.

He says, “You saved the world, right? Twice.”

“Once.”

“Okay, one and a half. Don’t fight me on the this. The point is, you _saved the world_. And then you didn’t take a vacation.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, Steve, _you need a vacation_. I’m not saying you need to stop worrying about doing the right thing all the time.” Sam swallows a lump in his throat. It’s one of the things that draws him to Steve, how he can’t turn off that need, can’t ignore that ethical compass that points true north. “I’m saying one of the right things is _taking a break_. There’s a reason the army limits tours of duty. And you can’t just—” he was about to say, _You can’t just put yourself in stasis between missions_ , but he can feel the place where that comes from inside him, and okay, maybe Sam Wilson is a bitter guy every once in a while. “You can’t just shut down. Living life is good for you. In the V.A. building, I used to ask people to read the posters. You know, those framed things in the hallways? ‘You took care of us, now let us take care of you.’ That stuff. I make people read that. And I ask them, ‘What do you think that means?’ They say, ‘I don’t know.’ But they do. It’s just so hard to admit it.

“What I’m telling you is, you more than earned a rest. You need a rest. And dammit, Rogers, if you don’t _take_ this vacation, I will personally make some very angry faces at you.” And to prove it, Sam turns his head and does the best impression of Nick Fury he can conjure up, glaring down his nose and setting his teeth.

Steve laughs. “Okay, Sam, you got me. I’ll take a vacation. I’ll even spend HYDRA’s money for a while.”

“Good. Just think of it as redistributing funds to the deserving.”

“I said for a _while_. If there’s as much money on this card as I think there is, we can do better things with it than buy—what were they called? Skiddles?”

“Skittles, and those are mine, Rogers. I paid for them. But you may eat them, because I am a nice person.”

“That you are.” Steve’s smirk means he’s messing with Sam a little, but Sam can’t quite read the expression from this angle. He feels that warmth in his chest again, and he coughs.

He reaches out a hand. “Open the red bag, would you? The one that says—yeah, that one, original flavor. Okay, I really wanted to watch your face while you do this, but I’ll settle for auditory feedback. But pour me some.” He waits until Steve pours out a few candies into his hand, and then he pops them into his mouth, every flavor at once.

“Here goes nothing,” Steve says, skeptical. Then there’s quiet, and a chewing noise. Then Steve makes a distinct sound of surprise, and then he says, “Hmm,” and then Sam hears the bag being upended.

Sam clucks his tongue. “Don’t ruin your dinner, now.”

“Shh. I’m tasting the rainbow.”

And _that_ is more than even Sam can bite his tongue on, so he says, “I didn’t know you swung that way, Rogers.”

But all Steve says is, “Mmm,” and so Sam listens to his friend chew happily for the next twenty miles or so as they head toward Danbury. He goes through three bags of Skittles: Original, Tropical, and Crazy Cores. He likes the red ones best and thinks the Crazy Cores are weird, and Sam agrees.

He starts poking the dashboard, which Sam takes as a sign that he’s feeling better. He turns the windshield wipers on and off, modulates the temperature until it’s warm—he hates being cold, Sam’s noticed—and sticks his fingers in the cd slot.

“Is this for records?” he says. He sees Sam’s look and his eyes narrow. “What?”

“That’s a cd drive. This is great news, man, these new cars don’t always have them anymore. Open the side pouch in the snack bag.” He points at the duffel. “Right there. Yeah, pull those out.” Steve produces a stack of formerly blank cds, scrawled on now with Sharpie in Sam’s appalling handwriting.

“What are these? They do look like records.”

“Compact discs. Grab—yeah, the second one. Just take it out of the case and put it in the slot. The car does the rest.”

Steve does as he’s told, though his expression suggests that he thinks Sam is pranking him. He waits as the cd makes its digital chirping noises, staring at the display. But then a thumping guitar line starts in, and his whole face opens up into delight. Sam slaps the steering wheel, keeping time.

_Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner_  
 _But he knew it wouldn't last_  
 _Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona_  
 _For some California grass_  


“Get back!” Sam sings. “Get back!”

“What is this?” Steve asks, already beginning to drum on the armrest.

“This, my friend,” says Sam, “is a mixtape. Mix cd. A collection of very important songs which I assembled a long time ago and which I happily forgot to take out of my travel bag. But more importantly,” he adds, rolling down the windows and cranking up the volume, “this is the _Beatles_.”

“I think that was on my list. Beatles. Like—the insects?” says Steve.

“Like the most important rock band of the twentieth century,” says Sam.

“Huh,” Steve says. “They’re pretty good.”

They drive east.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's title and the lyrics contained in it are from "Get Back," by the Beatles. I don't think any hybrid SUVs actually come with cd players anymore, but I'm pretending this one does.


	3. I am still living with your ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve arrive in Boston.

The _Best of Beatles_ mixtape gives out well before they get to Boston, but Steve sugar crashes and falls dead asleep in the passenger seat as the final chords of “The Long and Winding Road” are fading out, so Sam just switches off the stereo and drives into the night. The traffic clears up past Hartford but worsens again when they join up with 90, and Sam makes the executive decision to pull over at a Motel 6 off exit 12. They’ll hit the city in the morning.

“Hey.” Sam shuts off the car and looks over at Steve. Under the glare of the industrial-strength lamps that line the parking lot, he looks sallow, almost ill. Sam wonders what it was like for Barnes, all those years ago, watching over Steve while he fought off god knows what kinds of diseases with nothing but sleep and hope. He has the urge to put a hand on Steve’s forehead.

Instead, he says, “Steve, we’re here. C’mon, man, wake up.”

Steve stirs. “Sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“Maybe the fact that you ate like five pounds of candy? I know that serum’s badass, but man, I don’t think they accounted for high-fructose corn syrup. Let’s get a room for the night, okay?” Steve grunts his assent, and Sam opens the car door before Steve can see him blushing, because, okay, saying _get a room_ was a little more suggestive than he meant it to be.

They settle on a double queen, because Sam points out that sharing a bed won’t save them money. He’s _very_ proud of himself for getting through saying that with no tells. Steve doesn’t seem to cotton to anything being odd either way, though, just nods and lets Sam take charge, and because this is Massachusetts, the night clerk couldn’t care less. So it’s just five minutes of Sam feeling incredibly awkward all by himself, he figures, and he leads the way to the room with little fanfare, opening the door and plopping his duffel on the nearest bed.

But something about the room stops Steve up short. He looks around slowly, taking in---well, Sam has to imagine they didn’t have that particular hideous neon print in the ’40s, for one thing.

“Is there a tv in every room?” Steve says, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

“Yup. They’re cheap enough nowadays. Don’t get too excited—this probably doesn’t even get cable. But yeah, every room’s got a tv, a bed, and a bible. So you have your options for the evening’s entertainment.” He doesn’t know why he said _that_ , oh god. He looks directly into his duffel, pulling out clothes haphazardly, and prays Steve isn’t watching him. “Uh, do you have a preference for which bed you want?”

There’s no reply; Sam looks up to see Steve standing next to the other bed, his bag still in his hand, staring at the phone. After a second, he says, “No—this is fine.” Then he sighs, dropping the bag and sitting on the bed. “Thanks, Sam.”

Sam wants to ask him what’s wrong, but it’s nearly midnight, and he knows they’re both tired and probably hungry, though he isn’t feeling it yet. “No problem,” he says, and goes to change into his pjs. Steve doesn’t say anything when he closes the bathroom door behind him, and when he comes out, Steve is asleep on top of the covers in his clothes, his shoes kicked off onto the floor.

* *

The next morning, Sam wakes up to the smell of eggs and bacon, and for a moment he forgets where he is; then he remembers, and rapidly goes from disoriented to worried to amused.

“Did you make breakfast, Rogers?” he says, blinking. It’s dim in the motel room; not much past dawn, then.

Steve is in his running gear, sweaty and flushed, eating what appears to be his third Egg McMuffin. “Hmmfnjrfgmmh,” he says, and tosses a paper bag toward Sam.

“Hey, whoa,” Sam says, catching it. “I don’t know if I should be eating this in bed. Do you know how much grease is in this?”

“I’m tasting America,” Steve says, and suddenly grins. “Your idea.”

“I guess,” Sam says, trying to maintain an air of superiority, but he can’t help grinning back. Steve looks so happy that he succeeded in getting breakfast. He rummages in the bag. “What’d you get me?”

“I didn’t know what you liked, so I asked the girl at the counter what her favorite was,” Steve says. “We had a nice chat.”

Sam shakes his head. “That poor girl.”

“What?” Steve says. “People like a little chit chat.”

“It’s not _chit chat_ coming from you, _Cap,_ ” Sam says pointedly. “She’s gonna be telling her friends about that for _weeks_.”

He regrets the words as soon as he says them; it’s like Steve just shuts down, all that puppyish glee draining instantly away, replaced by the stern face of duty. Of Captain America. Sam’s seen that face far too often recently.

“Hey, Steve, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t—”

“No, you’re right,” Steve says, his voice serious. “I wasn’t thinking. Of course.” He crumples the wrapper in his hand. “I’ll shower. Let me know when you want to head out.”

Sam sighs. He dumps the bag out on the nightstand: an Egg McMuffin, a Sausage McGriddle, some Cinnamon Melts, some hash browns, a sausage burrito, and a strange pancake-like product smelling of maple in a package labelled “Hotcakes.”

He eats the burrito and packs the rest for the car, shaking his head at himself.

* *

“What do you want to see?” Sam says, when they’re back on the road, heading down what has to be the most pothole-ridden stretch of highway in America, nearing the center of Boston.

Steve is looking at a pamphlet they picked up in the motel and still munching breakfast. Sam hasn’t seen him eat like this since before the run on the helicarriers; despite having inadvertently taken the wind out of his sails this morning, Sam thinks Steve’s feeling a little better. Maybe the prospect of a touristy adventure is finally beginning to do its work.

“I always wanted to see the harbor,” Steve says. “And this museum—the fine arts museum? Can we go there?”

“Sure, whatever you want,” Sam says easily, sipping at his terrible McDonald’s coffee. He makes a note to drag Steve to a Dunkin’ Donuts as soon as possible. “You wanna go downtown and park, and we’ll just walk?”

“Sounds good,” Steve says. Then out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Steve freeze as he pulls up another pamphlet. His eyes go wide. He looks up with an expression Sam can only describe as the world’s most convincing Tiny Tim impression, and he says urgently, “Fenway Park is still open.”

“Yeah, it’s an institution,” Sam says. “It was around in your day?”

“Opened in 1912. They had the World Series there that year—Sox beat the Giants in eight games, bless ’em. When I was a kid, Fenway got a scoreboard with lights to mark the balls and strikes. I was just desperate to go see it. We never got the money together, but I listened to every game I could, just imagining what it would be like, sitting there in the stands. Ebbets Field was home, but Fenway was...” Steve closes his eyes. “Legend.”

It’s more words together than Steve has said in days, it seems like, and Sam feels a strange, brittle sensation in his chest. He knows what it’s like to want something that badly. He never thought of it as a good feeling, but the look on Steve’s face is peaceful, practically beatific.

“Ebbets is gone now,” Steve says suddenly, the moment gone. “I looked it up on the Wiki Encyclopedia.”

“Wikipedia,” Sam says, taking the turn for the harborfront. “And I promise you, we will buy tickets for today’s game just as soon as we park this car.” He looks out over the curve of the overpass, and smiles. “Steve, look out the window.”

They’re riding high over the city, all red brick, cream domes, and blue glass.

“Welcome to Boston,” Sam says.

“Only took me seventy years,” Steve says, and at that, Sam risks a glance over at him; but he doesn’t look upset, just a little stunned, his eyes following the curves of the architecture as the road descends.

* *

Sam likes the harbor more than Steve does; it turns out that Steve isn’t as much of a history nut as Sam is, so he skips the USS Constitution and any number of other national landmarks to head right for a hot dog truck. They decide to hit the Museum of Fine Arts the following day before leaving town, and after Sam scores some ( _very_ expensive) tickets, they head over to Fenway.

When they get within sight of the park, and they see all the fans pouring in, Steve just stops short. Sam wishes he had a camera, then. He doesn’t know what Steve is feeling; a mixture of sadness and joy, he guesses, considering that he probably wishes Barnes were here with him, rather than Sam. Steve’s lips are parted, as if he’s forgotten where he is, but for the first time in a while he doesn’t seem to be staring off into that fog of memory anymore: his eyes are clear, searching, taking in every detail. He’s so beautiful Sam wants to just reach forward and—

“I wish I had a camera,” Steve says. His voice sounds a little choked.

Sam is, if nothing else, a problem-solver. “Most people use their phones nowadays,” he says, “but this is Fenway, so... hang on.” He ducks over to the outer ring of vendors, hoping against hope, and after not too long he finds what he’s looking for. He jogs back to Steve.

“Disposable cameras,” he says, handing one to Steve. “Out of fashion nowadays, but some places still sell ‘em. Say cheese.” And he takes the very first picture of their road trip: Steve surprised and happy, startled into a laugh, one hand up to say _Wait, I’m not ready_.

They’re not allowed to photograph the game, but it seems like most of what Steve wants to take pictures of is the building: the entrance, the memorabilia, the rows of fans decked out in jerseys and caps. They’re playing the Yankees today, so the Sox colors have all come out.

When Sam leads Steve to their seats atop the Green Monster, he thinks Steve might actually faint from joy.

“How did you get these seats?” Steve says, shaking his head. “Do we owe someone a favor now?”

Sam just claps Steve on the shoulder. “Consider it an overdue thank-you,” he says.

“What for?”

He could say any number of things— _For being my friend_ , he wants to say, although it feels a little disingenuous, given the feelings he keeps having to stamp down on; _for being you_ is even worse.

“For saving this,” he says, realizing as he’s saying it that he means it, and that Steve needs to hear it. “You saved the world, Steve. That means you saved Fenway, too.”

Steve’s head jerks back, and his mouth opens, but he doesn’t say whatever it is he had it in mind to say. He just stares, and then closes his mouth, and then smiles.

“Better make the most of it, then,” he says, and goes to get peanuts.

* *

“Yeah, but you’d like _anyone_ who beats the Yanks,” Sam says, a little tipsy.

“Not true,” Steve says, just as loose-limbed and starry-eyed, though with victory, not alcohol. The Sox took the Yankees down 4-2, finishing with a beautiful double play that had Steve on his feet and cheering, and Steve is still riding high. “It’s the Giants you want to beat if you’re a Dodgers fan. Hey, maybe we can see them play in California.”

Sam’s eyebrows go up. “Oh, so now we’re going to California?”

“You said you wanted me to see America,” Steve says. “I’ve never been west of the Mississippi. Hey, where d’you wanna go for dinner?”

They eat at Legal Sea Foods, and Steve has fresh lobster for the first time in his life. Sam holds back on the beer, since he has to drive and all, until Steve notices and offers to take care of it, so Sam is about four beers deep for the day and feeling fine when Steve’s phone rings.

Both of them go silent. Sam’s heart is in his throat. It can’t be that Barnes has turned up, it wouldn’t make sense, but why else would anyone be calling?

But then Steve’s face goes soft when he sees the name on the display, and he picks up, walking smoothly outside to the patio. “Hello,” he says, his voice warm, and it can’t be Romanoff or Fury, not with that tone of voice, and Sam is so relieved he nearly melts into his chair.

It takes a few minutes to settle the check, and then he joins Steve outside on a pier looking over the water. The aquarium is nearby; Sam wonders if Steve might like to go there tomorrow.

“Actually, pretty good,” Steve is saying. Whoever’s on the other end of the phone is doing most of the talking, but Steve is nodding and smiling at practically every word. Sam would swear it’s an old friend of Steve’s, except—well. Steve really only has two old friends, and he’s pretty sure Peggy doesn’t ring his cell phone.

Steve looks up, then, staring at Sam. “Yeah,” he says. Then he grins. “The best co-pilot anyone could ask for, ma’am. Uh huh.” He raises his eyebrows. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. Nope. But I think you can call him by his first name.” Sam shrugs. Anyone who can make Steve this happy might as well be on a first-name basis with Sam.

“Okay. You too. Here you go.” Steve hands the phone over, and before Sam can say anything, a woman’s voice says, “Mr. Wilson?”

“Sam is fine,” he says. “Since I’m guessing I’m talking to a good friend of Steve’s.”

“He didn’t even tell you who was on the line?” The woman laughs. “This is Pepper Potts. CEO of Stark Industries. You can call me Pepper.”

“...Okay,” Sam says, trying to take this in stride. “Nice to meet you, Pepper.” Steve is watching him, eyes bright and amused, and Sam makes a face at him which means _I’m gonna get you for this later_. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh,” she says, “well, I hope you don’t mind my calling. I’m just—checking on Steve. We were all very surprised to see him at Fenway this afternoon.”

“Huh,” Sam says. “I didn’t realize you and Mr. Stark were fans.”

“Tony has alerts set up to scan media for all the Avengers’ faces. It’s a safety protocol.”

“Right,” Sam says, wondering if this means he now has a “safety protocol,” too.

“Anyway, I realize that sounds very creepy and invasive, and it is, actually, but that’s not why I’m calling. I just wanted to make sure—” she pauses, and Sam thinks he hears a sigh through the line— “that you have everything you need.”

Sam considers this. Steve is watching him more intently now; Sam wonders whether he can hear both sides of the conversation or not.

“I don’t mean financially, though of course we’d be happy to help out if you run into trouble,” Pepper goes on. “I just—we saw you in the stands, and it looked—”

And Sam’s heart starts pounding then, because he knows how it must have looked. The two of them shoulder to shoulder, Steve smiling, happy, and Sam looking up at Steve like he does sometimes when he thinks no one can see him. God, it must have been so obvious.

He wants to say, _It’s not what you think_ , but who knows what Pepper thinks. No wonder he’s getting this phone call; it’s not quite a meet-the-family, but he half-expects Pepper to make him promise to have Steve home by midnight.

“We’re just on vacation,” he says at last, because that’s true. “Steve wanted to see Fenway. He’s never been.”

Pepper is quiet for a minute. “Of course,” she says, and her voice is soft, compassionate. “That’s wonderful that you went with him, Sam.”

Something in the way she says that makes Sam’s shoulders come down from around his ears. Pepper isn’t here to grill him; she’s just worried about Steve.

“Listen,” Sam says, deciding to take a risk, “we’re probably going to be on the road for a while. Steve—well, there’s a lot of America out there that he missed. Not just the history. The places, too. Today he said he wanted to go to California.”

“Oh, you could come visit,” Pepper says, sounding pleased. “We’re rebuilding in Malibu.”

“That—would be great,” Sam says, and Steve makes a _What would be great?_ face, but Sam just waves him away.

“So you’re driving the whole way?”

“Yup,” Sam says, “and I think we’re gonna run out of mix cds pretty soon. I didn’t plan ahead that far. But Steve seemed to like his first encounter with the Beatles, so maybe we’ll just put that on repeat for the next thousand miles.” He watches for Steve’s reaction to this; Steve rolls his eyes.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Pepper says, and Sam thinks he hears something mischievous in her voice. “Where are you staying? Let me ship something over.”

Sam tells her, and gives her his own phone number, and they hang up with little fanfare. Steve looks like he’s aching to know what happened. “She’s sending something to the hotel,” he says. “And speaking of that, I’m feeling those beers.”

“Sure,” Steve says, and they head out, but Steve sneaks glances at him all the way back to the hotel.

* *

“FedEx is a magical thing,” Sam says the next morning when the desk clerk hands over a package as they’re checking out. “Thanks.”

“What is it?” Steve says eagerly, leaning uncomfortably close over Sam’s shoulder. The return address says _Stark Tower_.

They open it as soon as they’re in the car. Inside is a folded letter, a cd in a cracked pink translucent case with the words _Priceless Advice_ scribbled across it, and a polaroid photograph of a young woman in black boots, ripped jeans, a flannel, and a tshirt that says _The Truth Is Out There_. With a jolt, Sam suddenly realizes he’s also seen this woman on the cover of _Forbes_.

“Oh, _wow_ ,” Steve says, grabbing the photo. “Is that Pepper?”

Sam opens the letter.

 

_Dear Steve and Sam,_

_Don’t worry—I have the photo and the mixtape backed up, so these are yours to keep. I thought that you might want some more music for your drive. This is a mix I made in college, which is also when that picture was taken. Steve, consider it part of the America you missed._

_Please do come visit when you get to Malibu. Tony and I will be so glad to see you._

_Pepper_

 

The bottom half of the paper is a playlist; Steve has already opened the cd case and is inspecting the cd. Sam gives a low whistle as he looks the list over.

“You ready for this?” he says.

Steve nods, and Sam puts the cd in. He manages to get the camera out in time to snap Steve’s picture as the first song starts up, which is how they end up with a photograph of Captain America covering his ears and howling in surprise as he hears Nirvana for the very first time.

They leave Boston that evening exhausted and happy, heading west, Steve looking over a collection of postcards he bought at the MFA as Sam steers them back out onto 90. They skipped the aquarium after all; Sam figures they can do that sort of thing in other cities.

To Sam’s surprise, once the shock wears off, Steve absolutely loves Pepper’s mix, and he insists they play it over again, and then again, by which time he can sing some of the lyrics. When they pull over for the night and turn the stereo off, Steve is still humming:

_I am still living with your ghost  
_ _Lonely and dreaming of the west coast..._

Sam sleeps like the dead that night, and in the morning, he makes sure they find a Dunkin’ Donuts before they cross the state line into New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, those of you who are still here! I'm sorry that this is coming out in fits and starts, but I assure you that I haven't forgotten about it. 
> 
> Here, in case you were wondering, is Pepper's college mix cd, Priceless Advice:
> 
> 1 Heart-Shaped Box // Nirvana  
> 2 1979 // Smashing Pumpkins  
> 3 Friday I'm In Love // The Cure  
> 4 Queer // Garbage  
> 5 The Good Life // Weezer  
> 6 Loser // Beck  
> 7 Come Out Swinging // The Offspring  
> 8 I Want You to Want Me // Letters To Cleo  
> 9 She's Electric // Oasis  
> 10 Sex And Candy // Marcy Playground  
> 11 Out Of Gas // Modest Mouse  
> 12 Creep // TLC  
> 13 Outta Me, Onto You // Ani DiFranco  
> 14 16 Horses // Soul Coughing  
> 15 Last Nite // The Strokes  
> 16 Hang Down Your Head // Tom Waits  
> 17 Teenage Dirtbag // Wheatus  
> 18 Torn // Natalie Imbruligia  
> 19 Video Killed The Radio Star // The Presidents of the United States of America  
> 20 Santa Monica // Everclear
> 
> Update, March 12, 2017: [You can now listen to this playlist on Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/user/stillnotking/playlist/5rYd9cWActjFGb537dKjSH)


	4. Take a rest as a friend, as an old memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve eat their way through a town in upstate New York.

“This is a beautiful part of the country,” Steve says. “And—rich?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, taking a bite of his Boston Kreme. “Mmmf. This is—mmnnh—this is the Berkshires. One of the getaways for the wealthier citizens of the east coast. We could pull over if you want. Go for a look around.”

Steve puts his fingertips on the window, and his mouth twists up as he considers the passing scenery: lush trees, big houses glimpsed through the leaves, expensive cars in long winding drives. He drops his hand. “Nah. It’s ok. I’m not that excited to look at a bunch of rich folks’ stuff while some butler talks down to us. I get enough of that at Stark Tower.”

Sam spit-takes his coffee so hard that some of it gets his shirt. He starts laughing. “ _Steve_. Warn a guy first. I liked this shirt.” He can see Steve grinning out of the corner of his eye. “Aw, man. We just got in the car, too.”

“Here.” Before Sam can react, Steve is wiping the front of Sam’s shirt with a napkin. It’s not a big deal, he’s just cleaning up coffee, but the sudden contact makes Sam _very_ aware of how warm Steve is—he always seems just a little hotter than a normal human ought to be—and of how good Steve smells right now, like donut frosting and soap and something else that’s just Steve.

“All clean,” Steve says, sitting back and smiling, and Sam just smiles by way of saying thank you, because he doesn’t really trust himself to speak.

The box of donuts is already half-empty; they bought a dozen so that Steve could try as many flavors as he wanted. (“I’m not sure I can eat all those, Sam.” “Just take a bite out of each one and put it back. It’s a fine American tradition.”) So far, Steve likes the old fashioned glazed kind and the old fashioned powdered sugar kind, but he thinks the regular glazed is gross. Sam declared he needed at least one Boston Kreme to himself, but there are two more in the box because, let’s face it, they’re the best. Steve picks one up and eyes it. It’s fat with cream and topped with a generous coat of shiny chocolate.

Sam clicks his tongue. “Go on, Rogers. Don’t be scared. It won’t bite you.”

“That’s not the problem.” Steve turns it around, as if looking at it from another angle will help. “How am I supposed to get this in my mouth?”

And that—Sam _isn’t_ this puerile most of the time, he’s not, but he can’t help letting a sort of gurgling noise escape him at that, because _who says things like that?_ But he coughs to cover it, and then says, “Uh, there’s some leftover plasticware in the back, I think. If you wanna cut it.”

He isn’t sure, but he thinks he sees some of the smile leave Steve’s face.

“It’s fine,” Steve says, dispelling whatever that weird moment was. “I don’t need to cut it. I’ll just eat it.” Sam waits to hear Steve’s usual munching sounds. But nothing happens. Sam glances over at him. Steve is just sitting there, contemplating the donut. Sam wonders if they had stuff like this in the 40s. They must have, right? But maybe they weren’t _quite_ this industrially pumped full of creamy goodness.

Sam raises his eyebrows. “Rogers, are you afraid of your breakfast?”

“No. What? Of course not.” Steve makes a little _pfft_ sound, like that would be ridiculous. “I jumped off an exploding tank one time on the road to Lyon. I can eat a breakfast pastry.” And so saying, he takes a fierce, determined bite out of the donut.

Which promptly pops its cream all over the dashboard, Steve’s pants, and the ceiling.

Sam laughs so hard he has to pull the car over.

* *

When they’ve cleaned up the passenger side as best they can, Sam says, “So how far west do you wanna go today?”

Steve shrugs, stuffing the used napkins into a spare bag. “I don’t have a great sense of what’s out there. Let’s look at the map.”

They spread the road map over the hood, and as they run their fingers over the distances, Sam realizes the sheer scale of the project they’ve undertaken. Roads fan out far and wide across the paper, blue, red, and gold, an intricate tracery of possibilities. There’s a lot of America out there for Steve to see.

“Well, west from here is New York, mostly,” Steve says. “I mean, what do _you_ want to see?”

“What?” Sam says, emerging from his reverie. “We’re taking _you_ to see America, remember? I’m all good. I’ve had time off before.”

“Yeah, but there’s no way you’ve already seen _all of America_ ,” Steve says. “Come on. Pony up. What do you really want to see?” When Sam stays quiet, he adds, “We’ll trade off, okay? Just to keep it fair. Surely there’s _something_.”

“Okay, yeah,” Sam says, thinking. “All right. I have kind of wanted to go back to Ithaca. Passed through there once when I dated—a Cornell student.” He almost says, _a boy who went to Cornell_ , but he’s not ready to make that explicit yet, somehow. “But that was a while ago. I bet it’s more fun when you’re not spending hours in a dorm room.”

“Great,” Steve says. “Ithaca.”

The drive is short and uneventful; Steve plays Pepper’s mix over again and taps his hand on the dash as he sings along. Sam thinks he probably ought to be annoyed, but instead he finds it charming. Steve just loves to _experience_ things. It’s one of his most genuinely boggling features, Sam thinks—that someone who’s been through so much could still be so hungry to live. But then, despite having lived most of a century, Steve is actually pretty young.

Then Steve gasps, “Look at that, it’s _gorgeous_ ,” and Sam decides immediately that he is going to find one of those stupid tshirts and make Steve wear it all day.

“Welcome to Ithaca,” he says, trying not to sound smug. He’d forgotten how sudden and beautiful it is to arrive in Ithaca: one moment flat highway cutting through rows of trees, and the next, you crest the rise and there’s the lake, silver and glittering. “Wanna go see some trees first?”

“It looks like France,” Steve says abruptly, his voice low; but then he nods, his hands on the dash and his nose practically pressed against the windshield, trying to get a better view. “Yes. Yes, let’s do that.”

Robert H. Treman State Park, like most of the parks around Ithaca, is really just a place where the city stops and the forest begins. There’s an old grist mill that’s been turned into a visitor center, and of course Steve has to poke around it and read all the signs and ask Sam if he knows how it works. Sam doesn’t, but he likes watching Steve try to figure it out, see that quick tactician’s mind turn to a problem that’s slow, and unfamiliar, and difficult, for no better reason than that Steve wants to do it.

The park isn’t as dramatic as Sam remembered it being when he visited in a long-ago autumn; it’s late spring, nearly summer, and instead of dying leaves and cold wind, the park is full of plump birds, merry little butterflies, and one or two anxious rabbits who startle as soon as Sam and Steve look in their direction. They don’t talk much as they walk, but Steve matches Sam’s pace for once, and they spend about an hour just quietly exploring the trails and pointing out vistas and flowers to one another.

If he were a less cautious man, Sam might even say it was a little romantic.

Eventually Sam gets hungry, and Steve is basically always ready to eat, so they drive back into town and find a restaurant called the Carriage House where Sam has pancakes and Steve has eggs benedict, bacon, waffles, and his own little bowl of biscuits.

“Want one?” Steve says, offering a biscuit to Sam. “They’re really good.” He cracks it open; steam comes out.

“I’m okay,” Sam says. “You go ahead.” Steve shrugs and keeps eating, but his eyelashes flutter a little and he makes this kind of _noise_ when he takes a bite, and Sam’s pulse rate shoots through the roof.

He coughs. “You really enjoy your food,” he says.

Steve looks up, his face guarded. “Yeah,” he says.

“I—sorry. That was rude. I don’t usually comment on other people’s food, I just—it’s unusual.” He grimaces. This isn’t how he meant to say it at all.

But Steve’s face relaxes, and he kind of looks around the restaurant for a minute, like he’s making sure no one’s listening, and then he says: “Do you know how _good_ food is now? I mean compared to what I used to eat?”

Sam frowns. “Are you kidding? You know about GMOs and processed food and that stuff, right?”

“Sure. But we had processed food, too. And Bucky and I mostly ate whatever we could make at home, and let me tell ya, I’m not the best cook in the world, and the food wasn’t all that fresh either. Now there’s all these supermarkets, where you can get strawberries that just got off a plane from _South America_. That’s amazing, Sam. Not to mention how much more money I have now than I used to. And in the army...” he does that little half-smile that makes Sam’s heart flop. “Well. You know about that.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Sam chews thoughtfully on a pancake before he says, quietly, “I was gonna be a chef.”

“What?” Steve takes a big bite of waffle, and a tiny bit of syrup drips onto his shirt. Yeah, they _definitely_ gotta find a new tshirt for him.

“When I was younger, I mean. Not, like, a kid—but when I was in college. When I was visiting here, in fact.” Sam swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. “I used to watch all these cooking shows to relax, and then I got really caught up in it. Learned all this stuff about local food sourcing, seasonal produce, that kind of thing.”

“So what happened?” Steve says, around a mouthful of egg.

Sam shrugs. “I enlisted.”

He waits for Steve to press, but he doesn’t, just keeps chewing, like it’s not weird for them to be sitting in silence. Then Sam says, “I guess what I’m saying is—I like it when people appreciate food. That’s what I used to love about it. Getting to see someone else feeling good because of something I made.” Then a thought occurs to him. “You ate my breakfast. Did you really think that was so good just because it was from the twenty-first century?”

Steve laughs, a genuine belly laugh that stops conversation at the tables nearest them. “I guess I’m a yokel,” he says. “Everything tastes good to me. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sam says. “Really.”

They stare at one another for a moment, and then Steve says, in a voice that Sam would be hard-pressed not to call sexy, “You know so much about food. The food around here, too?”

“Yes,” Sam says.

“Okay,” Steve says, lashes lowering over his eyes. “Feed me.”

All of Sam’s blood rushes quickly southward.

“My pleasure,” he manages, and then stuffs pancake in his mouth before he can say anything else.

They eat their way through as much of Ithaca as they can. Steve’s caloric intake is easily more than three times what Sam’s is, if Sam’s previous experience of what Steve eats is any indication, so he’s the ideal candidate for an all-day, personally guided food tour of one of America’s locavore hotspots. First, Sam buys an overpriced ITHACA IS GORGES tshirt from a shabby little tourist boutique and makes Steve promise not to spill anything on it, and then he drags Steve over to Gimme! Coffee and orders an enormous latte, because he’s going to run out of steam well before Steve does otherwise.

The tshirt makes Steve look like an overgrown college student, which doesn’t do anything to quell the little jolt of lust Sam feels whenever he looks at him, but it does make it much funnier when the guy at the empanada place in the farmer’s market asks if he goes to Cornell.

(“What, only students like empanadas?” Steve says, between bites.

“Focus, Steve,” Sam says, eagerly unwrapping his food.)

They eat a lot of empanadas. They drink fresh-squeezed orange juice with shots of beet juice in it. They eat breakfast burritos and plantains, and they walk, and they eat hot dogs and cookies and cupcakes, and then they walk some more. Sam bought a bunch of stuff at the farmer’s market, thinking that they’d maybe make something with it later, but then later arrives and it’s hot out and the tomatoes just smell _good_ , so they wash the produce at a water fountain, they sit down on a bench in the Commons, and they eat everything raw and whole, like it’s just come up out of the earth.

“Mmmf,” Steve says around a bite of heirloom tomato. “Oh my _god_ , Sam. I don’t think I’ve ever had a tomato this good.”

“You’re getting juice on your shirt,” Sam says, laughing.

“I don’t care,” Steve says. “What else is in that bag?”

Sam feeds him a peach, and some early wild strawberries, and a little locally made cheese. He also picked up a mango lassi at the farmer’s market, so they drink that together, passing it back and forth and chatting about the kinds of stores they’ve passed and the different tastes of the food they’ve eaten.

“What’s your favorite food?” Sam says.

“Ice cream,” Steve replies, without hesitation. “We used to chase the Good Humor guy if we missed him.”

“You’re in luck,” Sam says, eyes twinkling. “Come on.”

They go to two different ice cream parlors, and Steve tries three different flavors at each (two of his own and one of Sam’s), for a total of six: cinnamon swirl, malt flavor with little maltball candies in it, green tea, blackberry twist, sweet potato marshmallow, and chocolate coffee crunch. At Sweet Melissa’s, Steve leaves Sam for a couple minutes to find a bathroom, and Sam finds himself looking around at the locals, camped out on the trestle benches outside. He can’t help imagining what his life might have been like if he hadn’t broken things off with the Cornell guy, if he’d stayed here in Ithaca. These would be his neighbors; maybe these would be his friends. He watches two women feed ice cream to a handsome pit bull, chatting animatedly. One of them senses his gaze and looks up; he smiles, raises his ice cream cone in salute, and looks away.

Steve’s already back, watching him.

“You’re a million miles away,” he says. “Whatcha thinking about?”

Sam doesn’t know how to answer that. _About another guy I could’ve been_ , he wants to say. _About a different man I could be standing next to right now_.

But what his mouth says is,

> “As you set out for Ithaca  
>  hope the voyage is a long one,  
>  full of adventure, full of discovery.  
>  Laistrygonians and Cyclops,  
>  angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:  
>  you’ll never find things like that on your way  
>  as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,  
>  as long as a rare excitement  
>  stirs your spirit and your body.”

Steve’s mouth opens in a little _o_. “That’s,” he begins. “What is that?”

“A guy called Cavafy wrote it,” Sam says. “A few years before you were born, I think. He wrote it in Greek, though.”

Steve fuzzes the back of his neck with his hand. His shoulders are tucked up tight, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “I didn’t know you read poetry.”

Sam snorts. “The Cornell student was a poetry major.”

“Were they,” Steve says, his voice fond, and Sam’s brain catches on that pronoun use and he looks up sharply, suddenly wondering how much he’s underestimated Steve, but Steve just holds out his hand and says, “Come on. I can’t get drunk, but I can still taste some beers, right?”

They wander by a used music store on the way to the pub, and Steve gets very excited and insists they have to go in. The store is dank, obviously a college student haunt, well-used and underloved, but Steve spends nearly an hour poring over the long racks of cds before bringing a stack of more than a dozen albums up to the register. He opens them up at dinner and thumbs through the liner notes, fascinated with the glossy photos and finely printed lyrics. His choices bring back a lot of memories for Sam: Steve picked a lot of bands he recognized from Pepper’s playlist, and so the table is strewn with Ani DiFranco, Modest Mouse, The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins.

When they get in the car, Steve immediately asks if they can put in a cd, and Sam can’t say no to his puppyish excitement, so they drive to a nearby motel to the strains of _Nevermind_ , but the loud guitar riffs jangle on Sam’s nerves. As soon as they’ve checked in and have keys, Sam heads right to the room, flops down on a bed, and rolls over.

Steve is quiet, slow. “Sam,” he says. “You all right?”

It’s not a very nice motel; the plaster is cracked and the whole place reeks of cigarettes. Even the light seems yellowed. It’s a depressing end to the day, and Sam feels as if a rug somehow got pulled out from under him and he’s only just noticed.

“I’m just tired,” he says.

He hears Steve jangle the car keys.

“Okay,” Steve says at last. “I’m gonna go run for a bit.”

“Night,” Sam says, grumpily, and then feels chastened when he hears the soft, “Good night, Sam,” in reply, and then the rustle of changing clothes, and the door shutting gently.

What is _wrong_ with me? Sam thinks, rolling to stare at the ceiling. He bites the insides of his cheeks, an old nervous habit, and turns over the events of the day. He had a fabulous day in a _gorgeous_ city with a man he would follow anywhere. He ate beautiful food and walked in the great outdoors. Why this sinking feeling in his stomach?

The Cornell dorms were impressive, he remembers, far better built and better kept than the grimy apartment block in Harlem where Sam grew up. It didn’t feel, then, like he was missing anything by spending hours—days—making love in those dorm rooms, adoring his boyfriend’s body, reading poetry together, whispering plans for the future. Now, that Ithaca seems to Sam to be a wholly different place than the sunny, trendy town he walked through today with Steve. Ithaca, he realizes suddenly, stood for something in his mind more than a place on the map; Ithaca was coming out. It was love. It was a place to be experienced _through_ love.

That Ithaca is gone.

Sam gets out of bed. He undresses, miserable, and then crawls under the covers to sleep, but lies awake instead, grinding his teeth. He doesn’t move when he hears Steve come in hours later, smelling of sweat and breathing hard, like he’s pushed himself even to his mighty limits. The noise of the shower is what finally rocks Sam down into unconsciousness, and he dreams of endless pages turning, and of a ship at the edge of a cliff overlooking a map as large as the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO MANY THANKS to [Thingswithwings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings) for an amazing beta-pick of this chapter. <3 All remaining errors are mine.
> 
> The Cavafy poem is called "Ithaka," and the lines I quoted here are from the translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. The complete poem can be found in translation [here](http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?cat=1&id=74), and it comes from C.P. Cavafy, _Collected Poems_ (Revised Edition), trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, ed. George Savidis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).


	5. It might seem crazy what I’m about to say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve visit an old New York State landmark and have a serious talk.

Even when the light is too bright to ignore, Sam can’t make himself open his eyes. He can’t bear to see everything go back to zero. He remembers with painful accuracy what Steve was like when they were hunting for Bucky: grim, blank, almost a walking ghost. In these last few days, Steve’s opened up so much, _trusted_ Sam so much, and he can’t watch all that happiness fade, just because Sam was stupid enough to—

Sam opens his eyes. “Why do I smell cloves?”

“Because it’s part of the seasonal drink at Gimme Some Coffee,” Steve says, and Sam rolls over to see a hot cuppa steaming on the nightstand, and Steve all washed and dressed. He’s sitting on the other bed—the other _made_ bed, because army habits die hard—and he’s smiling.

“It’s called _Gimme_ Coffee,” Sam says automatically, and Steve’s eyes twinkle. “Man, I swear you do that grandpa shit on purpose. Do you also use The Google?”

“I got you a flax seed and kale danish at the bakery,” Steve says, producing a flaky monstrosity from a white paper bag and handing it over. “Personally, I think it looks awful, but the clerk said it’s their bestseller, so here it is. By the way, I asked the coffee guy to put like twenty extra shots of espresso in that.”

“Huh,” Sam says, sitting up to take the pastry. He also picks up the drink, pulling the lid off the bright red paper cup. “Smells good. Twenty extra shots of espresso?”

“Yup. And don’t worry, I didn’t flirt with him.”

A slow warmth begins replacing the tight, cold fear that gripped Sam’s chest all last night. “You didn’t?”

“Nope. Not even a little. In fact, I told him I was married.”

“Married.”

“Well, maybe I just let him _think_ I was married.”

“Uh huh.” Sam tries to keep a straight face. Steve is such a troll.

“Well, engaged.”

“Congratulations.”

“Okay, _maybe_ I told him I was driving to Niagara Falls today with a handsome fella and that we were gonna go over the falls in a barrel.” Steve grins. “Apparently it’s the barrel part that’s illegal nowadays,” he adds, a wicked glint in his eye.

“Hell yeah it’s illegal. That shit’ll kill you.” Sam snorts. Then he looks down at his breakfast. Steve drove all the way back into town to get him this weird, hipster breakfast, just because he thought Sam would like it.

Sam’s pretty sure he owes somebody up there a big one.

“Hey man,” he says softly, not quite knowing whether to apologize, or say thank you, or what. “This is—great.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, “get back to me after you eat that thing.” He stands up. “You’re driving,” he adds, and tosses the keys into Sam’s lap.

The drive to Niagara isn’t bad, although Sam spends it wishing he hadn’t eaten the danish, which left his mouth with an aftertaste like dried bugs. As they leave Ithaca, the land opens up; thick trees give way to long, slow hills and little side roads dotted with rattling pickup trucks. Then they reach the highway, and almost before they know it, the signs for Niagara Falls start popping up, and then signs warning them that this is the LAST EXIT BEFORE CANADA.

Sam exits and turns, and then the car has to stop. Both of them just stare.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Steve touches the window. “This is... not what I expected.”

They’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on some kind of main street in a hellish, dystopian knockoff Disneyland. Crowds of tourists swarm the sidewalks, meandering in and out of brightly colored shop fronts, at least half of which are blasting the Top 40, so that the whole damn street might as well be in stereo. Steve’s eyes are the size of saucers. Sam can’t say he blames him.

“Can we go find a hotel first, maybe?”

Sam looks around them. Another car—no, three other cars—just appeared behind their SUV, and the road in front of them is jammed and unmoving. There are no turns before the light, which is glimmering red ahead of them.

“Short of strapping on some wings, I’m afraid not, Cap.” He smiles weakly.

Steve is looking sort of queasy. “Maybe we can take a turn off? Or one of these parking spaces...” His eyes search the lines of cars next to the parking meters, but everything is taken. “Wait! Look, there’s a garage. See?”

Sam looks. Not a car’s length away, hidden between two large parked cars, there’s a narrow driveway with a flashing arrow and the legend: PARK HERE. There’s no price listed anywhere.

“Man, I dunno,” Sam says. “Right on the strip, it’s gonna be way overpriced...”

He expects Steve to argue, but no sound comes; Steve’s just sitting there, getting rapidly greener around the metaphorical gills, staring at the endless parade of small, sticky children and exhausted parents. Sam reflects that when Steve was a kid, there were about a third as many people in America, so maybe this is kind of a lot of people. And Steve wouldn’t be the first veteran Sam’s known who doesn’t feel great about crowds. Not by a long shot.

“Hey,” he says, forcing a smile, “wasn’t I the one telling you that it’s your God-given right as an American to spend money on things? It’s the American Dream! I sure as heck can’t stand in the way of _that_. Especially,” he adds, his voice softening, “if it makes you feel better.”

Steve doesn’t smile, but his frown lessens, and he says in a small voice, “Thanks, Sam.”

“Anytime,” Sam says, twisting the wheel to make the tight turn into the garage.

It turns out that the garage has a back exit out toward the falls, so they don’t have to walk through all the chaos of the main drag in order to get some air and see the sights. Sam makes the executive decision that they should take their clothes for tomorrow with them, figuring that—since Steve’s still looking a little unsteady—they’ll just find a hotel whenever they’re done walking around rather than deal with moving the car again.

There’s a knot in Sam’s stomach, and he can’t tell if he’s feeling worried about Steve or not. On the one hand, Steve is kind of the steadiest guy Sam knows, so seeing him upset is a rare and anxiety-inducing experience. On the other hand—well, Sam also knows what it’s like to be hurting inside but never show it, even to the people closest to you, just because you don’t want to be a burden. If Steve is willing to _show_ Sam that he’s upset, willing to let Sam park the car and grab the bags and lead the way... then Sam is damn well gonna be worthy of it.

There’s a path that leads along the gorge, and they follow it up to a lookout where they can just about see the falls if they lean over the rail. Steve seems happier by the time they arrive at the lookout; the sun’s come out, there are fewer people in this part of town, and since Sam remembered that feeding Steve on the regular is important, they’re munching on granola bars and another bag of Skittles. For a while, they just stare out at the water, not saying anything. Sam wonders how impressive this is or isn’t to Steve, after everything he’s seen. The falls aren’t transcendently beautiful or anything, but they are dramatic in that way that upstate New York sometimes is, which Sam loves: one minute city, and the next minute a vee of sky and a long descent of rushing water over the rocks.

“Ex _cuse_ me.”

They turn around to see an angry-looking white guy all in dark clothing, toting a bunch of camera equipment. He’s got a massive camera slung around his neck as well, and he’s wagging it at them in chastisement. “ _Excuse me_. This lookout is for married couples _only_.”

Steve’s face quickly clouds, and Sam bursts out with, “That’s not any kind of rule, man,” just as he hears Steve say, “This belongs to the _public_.”

Bossy Photographer Guy looks completely unfazed. “I am the lookout photographer for the day. I am taking photos of people who are _engaged_ or _married_. Please find somewhere else to—” he waves the camera vaguely— “whatever it is you do.”

Sam braces himself for Steve to tell the guy off, or argue, or say something else that begins with _Listen, son_ , but instead he does something that shocks Sam so much it actually makes him jump: he puts his arm around Sam’s waist and pulls him close.

“Kid,” Steve says, “not everybody gets married. Not everybody _can_ get married.”

The photographer just makes an unimpressed duckface. “Please. This isn’t a _homophobia_ thing. I’m not a _homophobe_. I take plenty of pictures of— _all kinds_ of couples. As long as they are _married_ or _getting married_. Are you getting the picture? This is Niagara Falls, for pete’s sake. It’s not a crime to maintain some _traditions_ around here.”

“What, the tradition of excluding people?” Steve says. “You know, it wasn’t just _married couples_ who—”

Sam’s half listening to Steve giving the guy a good history lesson, but his mind keeps circling back to Steve’s arm around him, how _warm_ he is, God, how strong the hand on his waist is. He smells that Steve smell again, a little sweatier than usual but no less compelling. For a minute, he doesn’t know what to do, isn’t sure if Steve is just trolling the guy or making a point or what, and what he should do about it. But then Steve gives Sam’s waist a surreptitious squeeze, and Sam flashes back to that moment when Steve asked him for a ride off the helicarrier: _Let me know when you’re ready!_ and Sam’s realization that Steve had already jumped. _I just did_.

This context is completely different and significantly less life-threatening, of course, but Sam feels his heart warm to realize that the situation is basically the same. Steve just took the leap and is trusting Sam to catch him.

“—and another thing about getting married at the Falls—”

“—is that not everyone _wants_ to get married, you know,” Sam cuts in. The photographer looks horrified, so he goes on. “Yeah. We’ve been together more than five years—”

“Almost six,” Steve adds.

“Almost six years, thank you, sweetie. And we don’t need to get married for our relationship to be complete, do we, pumpkin?”

The use of the endearment “pumpkin” makes Steve’s face do something complicated that Sam strongly suspects means he’s trying not to laugh, but he covers it, and he nods seriously. “That’s right, sugar pea.”

At this point, the photographer looks like he can’t figure out whether they’re making fun of him or not, and his face is very red. Sam thinks he might actually start yelling in earnest, but then he seems to decide they’re not worth it, and just storms off, grumbling.

“You know,” Sam says, considering what just happened as he watches the photographer disappear into the crowd, “there’s no way that guy was legit. I bet he stands here all day, scaring away single people and scamming newlyweds out of money for photos that never arrive.”

Steve just hums in acknowledgment, his eyes focused out in the distance; then he suddenly seems to come back to himself, and he jerks his hand away from Sam’s waist. “Yeah. Thanks for playing along.”

“Whatever. You love trolling people.”

“I will add that word to my list of words to look up,” Steve says, grinning. Then the cloud returns to his face, and he sighs; and then he leans over the railing again, turning away from Sam and staring balefully out at the water. Sam leans down next to him and, because he’s starting to get the hang of this, he waits.

“I was gonna get married here,” Steve says at last, startling Sam. He knows about Peggy Carter, of course, but he didn’t think they’d made any kind of plans like that. But then, he supposes that wouldn’t have been in any of the material the media had.

“Wow. I’m sorry, man. You and Peggy?” He folds his hands, feeling awkward.

Steve turns, then, looking Sam full in the face. Sam can see how bright his eyes are, how earnest. It’s hard to hold his gaze, but he does it, and he’s glad of it when the next words out of Steve’s mouth are,

“Me and Bucky.”

Sam’s whole world spins. Steve is coming out to him. Steve also likes men. He’s bisexual. God, _Captain America is queer_. And for no one less than his plucky best friend, who rather inconveniently is currently a brainwashed assassin on the run from any number of covert multinational organizations after taking part in a pitched battle over U.S. soil which left dozens dead and parts of the Potomac on fire.

And which would’ve killed Steve, except that Bucky saved his life.

Sam’s pretty sure there isn’t really a stock phrase or Hallmark greeting card for this moment, so he just puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Steve looks at him then, eyes sad but clear. He shrugs. “I don’t think anyone knew. And hey, how serious were we? I mean, we were a couple of dumb kids. We were gonna sneak up here after the war and—I don’t know what. Put me in a dress and see if we could get the preacher to go through with it?”

Sam can’t help laughing at that. “Not sure I can picture you in a wedding dress.”

A funny look crosses Steve’s face, and he narrows his eyes. “Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it. Anyway, you might remember I was a lot smaller then.” He snorts. “But nah, I don’t think even we coulda pulled off a prank like that. Mostly we just wanted to come here together. To be—” Steve sounds a little choked. “—to be lovers together.”

Hearing Steve say the word _lovers_ sends a sweet bolt of sadness through Sam. Here he’d been mooning over Steve for weeks, when all the while Steve had been chasing his lost love across America. When Steve gave up on finding the Winter Soldier, he also gave up on finding the man he loved.

“That’s why you wanted to come here,” Sam says, realizing. “You thought—maybe he’d be here?”

“No,” Steve says, mouth grim. “I doubt he’d remember about that now.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and Sam doesn’t know how to reply. The water seems very loud in the silence, making the nearby chatter of tourists a barely discernable white noise.

“Then why?” Sam says, finally.

Steve grips the rail. “Just to see it, I guess. Maybe put that to rest. Bucky’s never gonna come here with me, Sam. I’ll never put on a wedding dress, prank or not. But I still wanted to see it.” He sighs. “I guess I’m kind of relieved that it’s not a very nice place anymore. I don’t know if I could’ve borne it if it’d been...”

Sam’s mouth twists. “Romantic?”

“Yeah.” Steve drops his head, and Sam doesn’t know what to do, so he just waits. He crosses his arms, and turns around to lean against the rail. He can feel heat radiating off Steve’s body; spring hasn’t quite warmed up yet in this part of the country, and the air nearer the falls is cold, even at midday. His heart is pounding.

“Steve,” he says, “I’m grateful that you—I’m glad you trusted me with this.” He blows out a puff of air. “You know I’m gay, right?”

He sees Steve smile out of the corner of his eye. “ _Know_ is a strong word. I had a hunch.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why you’re the tactical genius.” Sam rubs his face, feeling tired. He didn’t expect it to be such an anticlimax when he finally let that particular cat out of the bag.

“I can’t be too much of a tactical genius if none of my flirting gave you even a hint that I liked guys.”

And _that_ is enough to make Sam physically freeze in place.

“Say that again?” he says, when he can swallow the sudden lump in his throat.

“C’mon,” Steve says. “There’s no innocent way to say _I’m tasting the rainbow_.”

“Oh my God.” A number of the interactions they’ve had on the road are starting to look rather different as Sam runs through them in his head. “Oh my God. You’re kidding me.”

“Frequently, yes,” Steve says, the expression on his face fond. “But not at the moment.”

Sam turns all the way the hell around and looks Steve in the face. “Hold up. You brought me here to tell me that, Item One, you like guys, Item Two, one of those guys happened to be James Buchanan Barnes, and Item Three—” but he can’t make himself say it. It still sounds too ridiculous.

“Item Three,” Steve finishes, “one of those guys happens to be you.”

Just this morning, the fantasy of Steve telling Sam that he had feelings for him was a pleasureable one, with subsequent possible narratives verging into the territory of wank material. But now, confronted with the reality of it, with his really real friend Steve being honest and vulnerable and telling him about his feelings for Bucky nearly in the same breath, Sam kind of just feels like he needs to sit down.

“I need to sit down,” he says, walking unsteadily over to a nearby bench. Steve goes with him, sitting what Sam now realizes is a careful distance away, the usual distance away. Steve looks guilty. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

Sam puts his own hand over Steve’s. “Hey. I’m glad you told me. This is just—a lot at once.”

Steve nods, but the guilty expression doesn’t go away.

“Look, Sam, I just—I wanted to be honest with you. About everything. If we’re gonna be on the road together, I thought you deserved to know. And if you don’t want to—any of it, if you don’t want to do the road trip or—whatever else...”

Sam squeezes his hand. “Hey. Look at me. Steve.” Steve does, meeting his eyes with a glum look. “I’ve had a crush on you since practically forever, okay?”

At that, Steve smirks, looking relieved and pleased. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Who wouldn’t want to date Captain America?”

He knows instantly, even before he sees Steve’s reaction, that it was the wrong thing to say. Steve’s whole face shutters and he draws his hands away from Sam’s grasp. “Yeah. Right. Who wouldn’t.”

“Steve.”

“It’s fine.”

“Steve, please tell me what just happened.”

He wouldn’t push, ordinarily. Sam feels like he’s actually been doing a really great job of _not_ pushing. But he can’t lose this, not now, not like this, and some of that desperation must show on his face, because Steve takes one look at him and groans miserably.

“I just—” he closes his eyes. “I was kinda hoping you might want to date Steve Rogers. Not Captain America.”

Steve looks so sad, sitting with his head drooped, his hands hanging loose in his lap. Sam doesn’t know how to make him understand, how to apologize. But he does know that the best apology is always an honest one.

He sucks in a breath. “Okay. First of all, that was a dumbass remark and I just said it without thinking because I was scared. I’m sorry. And second of all—” How can he put this? Sam doesn’t want to be harsh or inconsiderate, but he feels it has to be said. “I’m not ever gonna know you like Bucky knew you, okay? I mean, you’re Steve Rogers to me, and you don’t have to worry about that. I’ve seen your dirty gym socks. I know you got feet of something way stinkier than clay.” That gets a tiny smile out of Steve, which gives Sam courage.

“But you’re _also_ Captain America. I’m never not gonna know you as Cap. It’s part of why I—have feelings for you. It’s who you are, too.” He sighs. “I just don’t want you to think—I mean, I’m not ever gonna know you from the inside out like he did. I couldn’t. I can’t be a replacement.” He swallows hard, realizing as the words come out that this is his big fear, this was always the big fear: that he’s just a stand-in for the people who really matter, a placeholder until real life returns.

Steve has that determined expression back, the We-can-do-it expression that Sam has grown to cherish and fear in equal measure.

“I could never do that to you,” he says. “I don’t want you to replace anybody.” Then he looks over the rail and raises his eyebrows. “Then again, maybe there was something subconscious going on, bringing you here.”

“Steve,” Sam says. “I wanna do this.”

Steve looks at him.

“I wanna date you,” Sam says, feeling more and more foolish but unwilling to let the opportunity pass him by. “I just—need to take everything real slow.”

He’s afraid for a moment that Steve will say no, or be hurt, or something equally bad, but Steve just smiles sweetly and says, “That sounds swell.”

Sam chuckles. “I love your weird grandpa vocabulary.”

“Come on,” Steve says, standing up and offering Sam a hand. “Let’s see what there is to eat around here.”

As they walk back toward town, the blaring sound of the radio crescendos from the speakers overhead.

_Give me all you got and don’t hold it back_  
 _Well, I should probably warn you I’ll be just fine..._

“In our newfound spirit of honesty,” Sam says, “I should tell you, that danish was terrible. It tasted like bugs.”

Steve grins. “And here I thought you just had a palate refined beyond mortal comprehension.”

“Nope. Mouth’s in perfectly normal working order for a mortal.”

“Aw, geez.”

“What?”

“Sam, I’m beginning to see why you couldn’t tell what flirting was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooof, this was a beast of a chapter! My apologies for any typos or other errors -- this one's unbetaed. Quick historical notes: 
> 
> \- I have no idea if anyone tried to get Secret Gay Married at Niagara Falls, but I kind of doubt it. I made that idea up for this story. There were certainly plenty of gay people running around New York in Steve's day, but I can't imagine that tricking someone into marrying them would've been high on their to-do list. 
> 
> \- It is definitely illegal to go over the Falls, and for very good reason: it's deadly. People really did go over in barrels, though.
> 
> \- The tourist strips at the Falls are pretty horrifying--that part's accurate--but I confess I've moved the geography around slightly for the sake of the narrative. If I recall correctly, most of the resort / tourist area is actually on the Canadian side, as are most of the good lookouts. But whether my memory is right or not, I'm pretending that our heroes encountered all that good stuff without having to cross the border.
> 
> \- The song playing over the loudspeakers at the end of this chapter is "Happy," by Pharrell Williams, which was indeed in the Top 40 at the time this story is set (spring 2014).


	6. I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Sam work out what comes next.

Steve wakes up abruptly, like he so often does—a quick hitch of breath in the throat, a moment of wild panic, and then the improbable thought _I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive_. He lets himself lie flat under the covers for a moment, just staring at the ceiling as he wills his heartbeat to slow. He likes the motels they stay in, the way the sheets are starchy and tucked tight around the mattress, so that he can feel the pressure of the fabric as he sleeps, enveloping him, keeping him secure. When he has nightmares, it comforts him to wake up somewhere warm and dry and scratchy and human. The unassuming standard-issue bed of a Motel 6 may have few virtues, but chief among them is this: it is, in a way that convinces Steve’s hindbrain, very definitely not the bottom of a river or an ocean. Steve breathes, feeling calmer.

Then Steve looks over at the bed next to him, and his heartbeat speeds up again.

Sam is half-sprawled across the bed, having made a wreck of the bedclothes, with one leg twisted up in a pillow and most of the covers. He’s only wearing boxers, and the soft light from between the thin, fluttering curtains catches the muscles of his back and thighs and highlights the fabric pulled tight over his ass. Steve blushes and feels his dick getting hard, all pressed against his stomach under the covers.

Ordinarily, Steve would just quietly get up at this point and go for a long, hard run until all of that need is worked out of him. He doesn’t know if the serum had any effect on his sex drive, because who could tell in wartime what was chemistry and what was, well, _chemistry_ —but he does know that Sam just _does_ something to him. Just Sam’s smile, the way he folds his arms, the _muscles_ in his arms—

Steve groans and turns his head away from the other bed. He doesn’t think that their talk yesterday means Sam is ready for sex or anything. They kind of just didn’t discuss it after they left the falls—just walked around and pointed at stuff and ate dinner and went to bed, like old-timers. Back in Brooklyn, Steve would’ve said that if a guy told you he wanted to date you, that meant you were pretty well secure you could take him around to the alley and unbutton and he’d gladly cornhole you. Which means it would probably be fine to just sneak his hand down and take care of this, right?

He whimpers as he thinks about it and lets himself grind against the sheets, just a little, just enough to feel the big hard length pushing upward, needy and tight. It’s been years, but he still finds the sensation a bit foreign, as if it’s someone else’s cock, someone else needing satisfaction. The thought makes him even tenser, and his grinding becomes more forceful as he feels the heat building. He remembers how Bucky used to do this with him, before—how he’d reach over in the morning and cover Steve’s whole dick with his hand, just keep him going like that for what felt like forever. Steve’s breathing harder, and he thinks it must surely be audible, but Sam is asleep, Sam is—

—and then Sam rolls over with a soft sleep noise, and Steve just can’t do this without Sam’s consent, he _can’t_ , even if Sam never knows he did it.

He forces himself still, completely flat on the bed, arms at his sides. He stares at the ceiling and tries to pull himself back from the edge. He listens to Sam’s little snores and he thinks of anything that’s boring, unsexy. He thinks about how early it is. He thinks about the pattern on the curtains. He thinks about oatmeal.

Slowly, his body relaxes and he sighs, feeling guilty. He knows perfectly well that Sam meant it when he said _take everything real slow_ , and it’s not Sam’s problem that Steve doesn’t really have a setting for _slow_. Steve likes fast men, rough trade, and jumping out of airplanes. Until now, all of that was fine. But he doesn’t want to fuck up what he’s got here with Sam. And Sam seems to Steve to be a different caliber of guy. Someone you oughta dress up for and buy flowers for.

Steve gets up, puts on his running clothes, and starts out the door, realizing that he has never in his life been on a real actual date.

But he’s not gonna let that stop him.

*

After thirty klicks or so, Steve finally feels wound down enough to go back to the motel. It’s a longer run than he usually does; he probably won’t have time to get breakfast before Sam wakes up. Maybe they can go to breakfast together. Steve remembers seeing an ad on a pamphlet in the motel lobby for something called the International House of Pancakes, and Steve really likes pancakes.

As he’s walking back around the side of the motel to their room, the phone in his running shorts buzzes. He pulls it out.

> hey bro u having fun on ur trip? stateside btw.

Only one person calls Steve “bro.” He smirks and types back.

> NIAGARA FALLS TODAY  
> SMALLER THAN EXPECTED

He waits, feeling the sweat drip down his temples. The phone buzzes again.

> cool story bro

Steve rolls his eyes. He knows this is a dig for more information. Texting complicated feelings doesn’t come naturally to him, though; he’s used to sending text messages to report troop movements, not discuss his love life. Finally, after dithering for a good minute, he hits the CALL button.

She picks up on the first ring. “Rogers.”

“You are such a pain in my ass, _bro_.” Steve is grinning into the phone. “Whaddya wanna know?”

“I get a choice?” He can hear Natasha’s eyebrows going up sardonically. “I’m sure you’ve got some valuable military information rattling around up there. Maybe the locations of some World War Two-era bunkers I could use as safehouses. Or you could tell me whether you’ve finally admitted to Sam exactly how badly you want to roger him.”

“Roger him.”

“You know what I mean.”

“How long have you been saving that pun?”

Natasha sighs. “So you haven’t told him, is what I’m getting from this.”

She has him dead to rights. Steve groans in frustration. “I mean, I kinda did. I told him that I date guys. And that I’d like to date him.”

“And he said no?”

“He said he wanted to date _Captain America_.”

“Steve, I dunno how bad you hit your head before you got dunked in the Potomac, but you _are_ Captain America.”

Steve snorts. “Rude.”

“Yet correct.”

“Fine.” He puts a hand over his eyes. “I just—I don’t have any idea what he wants. I mean, I’m not gonna put on the stars and stripes to take him to dinner. I don’t even know _where_ to take him to dinner. He’s the food expert, it turns out.” He can hear his voice getting a little overfond, but thankfully, Natasha doesn’t comment on it.

“Rogers, are you asking me for _dating advice?_ ”

Steve twists his mouth up. “Uh. Well. Do you have any?”

There’s a pause.

“What have you guys done so far?”

Blushing, Steve says, “Uh, not much. I mean, we haven’t even kissed or anything.”

There’s a low chuckle on the other end of the line. “Not _sex_ stuff. On your trip. What does he like to do?”

“Oh.” That makes more sense. “Well, he likes interesting food. And he likes music. We’ve been listening to a lot of great bands. Pepper actually sent me her college mixed cd.”

“Mix cd.”

“Yeah. So there’s that. And... he likes poetry, I think?” Steve swallows hard, thinking about Sam just reciting that poem from a bench in front of an ice cream place, like some ancient orator just dropped into the modern day. “Mostly we’ve been driving and looking at stuff.”

“Oh my god, Rogers, you’re pathetic.”

“Why do you think I’m asking for advice?”

Natasha makes a little _heh_ sound. “Yeah, okay. Look, Sam’s a classy guy, but he clearly knows what he’s dealing with. I mean, he’s been around you long enough.”

Steve isn’t so sure, but he says, tentatively, “Okay...”

“So just treat him to something nice. He likes music, right? Go to a concert or something. Buy him dinner. That’s a date.”

Steve ponders this.

“How long has it been since _you_ were on a date?” he says.

“Talk to you later, bro,” Natasha says, and she hangs up.

*

At IHOP, Steve gets three different kinds of pancakes because his extra-long run made him so hungry: strawberry banana, chocolate chip, and double blueberry. Sam notices that they form a trifecta of patriotic breakfasts (being that they are, respectively: red, kinda starry-looking, and blue), so he makes Steve cradle the plates awkwardly in his arms and then takes a picture.

“Are you uploading that to the internet?” Steve says, putting the platters down as gently as he can. He still breaks dishes all the time by accident. Sometimes he just forgets how little force he has to use to lift them. It’s embarrassing.

Sam smiles coyly as he taps away on his phone. “Unlike you, Rogers, I do not have a secret network of spy friends with whom I Snapchat.” He looks up. “You don’t know what Snapchat is, do you.”

Steve snorts. “Excuse me, _you_ clearly just learned what it is, and now you’re name-dropping it to try to make me feel old and out of touch.” He stuffs a bunch of strawberry banana pancake into his mouth and syrup drips down his chin and onto his shirt. “Ahm nah rr gmmpa oo gno.”

“Say again?”

“I’M NOT YOUR GRANDPA, YOU KNOW.” Steve wipes his chin with his tiny napkin and looks around immediately for another one.

Sam smiles and hands his own napkin over. “Yeah, I’d be a little less okay with this whole dating thing if you were my grandpa.” He watches Steve futilely dab at his shirt. “You can just change in the car, man.”

“Uh. If you’re okay with that.” Steve feels himself blushing.

“I—why would I not be okay with that?”

Steve feels a twinge of uncertainty. The real reason is that he doesn’t know what kinds of intimacy Sam is okay with, but he feels like just _saying_ that is itself kind of pressuring Sam about it a little bit. So instead, he puts on his most deadpan expression and says, “I just wouldn’t want to get you all worked up or anything. I mean, while we’re in public. Could be awkward for you, looking at my manly physique all up close and stuff.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

Sam sputters over his ham slice. “Mmmf. Rggmg—” He swallows. “Steve, you are sorely deceived if you don’t think your manly physique is getting me worked up anyway, shirtless or not.”

A warm feeling spreads all over Steve’s skin, like a radiator just came on. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Damn, Rogers, no one ever tells you how good you look?”

Steve examines his pancakes. When he looks up, Sam is watching him intently, with that sad, serious expression he wears so often around Steve. God, he’s so careful with Steve, like he’s breakable.

Well—in this sense, maybe he is.

Willing himself to make eye contact, he says, “It matters a lot more when you say it, Sam.”

“Well, I mean it.”

Steve wants to add, _And would you still mean it if you saw me before the serum?_ but he swallows the thought along with the pancake, right along with the sudden lump in his throat. He changes the subject, and they chat about their route, which will take them into Detroit tonight and then probably on to Chicago the next day. Steve doesn’t know a lot about the Motor City, but Sam seems to think it’s going to be fairly grim.

“It was recovering when I went into the ice,” Steve says. “What happened?”

Sam makes a face. “They’re calling it the Great Recession. You know about that? Whole country up and crashed seven years ago. Detroit just got hit hard. A lot of neighborhoods had been—” he paused. “You know about integration, right? Bussing? All that?”

“I’ve been reading up some.” Steve thinks about telling Sam how much time he spends online, clicking endlessly through Wikipedia, but decides now isn’t the time.

“Well, a lot of people say that the riots in the ‘60s caused the white flight to the suburbs, but it was really the integration order. After that, Detroit had a hard time coming back. They were doing okay for a while in the ‘90s, but there just wasn’t anything addressing the underlying racism problem.” Sam drains his coffee. “So now the communities with the least support from the white-controlled governement have just collapsed again. You can guess which ones those are.”

“Yeah, I saw all that stuff about the water bills,” Steve says darkly. “Water company shutting off houses for nonpayment. That is a _civil rights violation_. I wrote a lot of angry letters.”

“You saw that? Where?”

“It was on Wikipedia. Plus I heard from some tumblr folks about it. Paid off the water bills, when I could find people.”

Both Sam’s eyebrows go up. “You have a _tumblr_ account?”

“I just read stuff.”

Sam shakes his head. “Do _not_ let anyone know your handle, man. Press would have a _field_ day.”

The waitress pokes her head over Steve’s shoulder. “Anything else I can get for you gentlemen?” Her smile is just this side of phony, but Steve’s seen that expression before. People just don’t know how to react to seeing Steve walking around.

“Nothing, ma’am,” he says, remembering his manners. “Thank you.”

“Just the check, please, when you have a minute,” Sam adds, giving her a smile. He’s so good at being warm, Steve thinks. Kindness just comes naturally to Sam Wilson.

When the waitress is gone, Sam leans over and hisses, “Okay, but really, what’s your handle?” 

Steve grins. “I can’t tell you.”

“C’mon, man.”

“It’ll go to your head.”

“I can handle it, Steve.”

He sighs, unable to stop smiling. “Ok. Falconfan dot tumblr dot com.”

Sam smacks the table in delight and his eyes bug out. “WHAT! You’re messing with me, Steve. Don’t mess with me.”

“Nope.” Steve giggles a bit. He can’t help it.

“Steve. That is a really intense level of secret man-crush, okay.”

Steve’s brow furrows. “I’m pretty sure it’s just called a _crush_ when you want to, uh, kiss the fellow.”

That makes Sam’s whole face go so soft and open and tender that Steve nearly reaches across the table and does it right then. He even leans forward a bit.

His elbow lands in a pancake.

Sam bursts out laughing. “I don’t know what it is with you and food, man. It’s like you’re cursed to be covered in something delicious.”

A day ago, Steve would’ve bitten back his response, and he almost does— _almost_ —but he remembers Natasha saying _he knows what he’s dealing with_ , and he tells himself, okay, if you want Sam to date _you_ and not just Captain America, you have to really be yourself.

“Covered in something delicious, Sam?” he says. “Like you?”

Sam’s mouth falls open a little.

“Here you go,” says the waitress, plopping the check down between them. “Just take it up to the front. Have a wonderful day.”

Neither of them move.

“People talked dirty in the forties, huh,” Sam says at last.

“You have no idea,” Steve says happily. “C’mon. I’ll drive.”

*

There’s a little spit of Canada that runs between Niagara Falls and Detroit, just out of the way of Toronto where she sits on the north side of the lake. Steve figures they can come back there some other time. Sam seemed pretty excited about Detroit; as they pass through the suburbs of Niagara, he’s chatting away to Steve all about the origins of Motown music and how it’s influenced so many modern musicians, and how Detroit helped launch Marvin Gaye’s career in the early sixties.

And that gives Steve an idea. Maybe he can actually take Natasha’s advice. He can do this. He coughs, grips the wheel a little more tightly.

“Hey Sam,” he says, “do you, uh, wanna hear some music with me?”

He can’t turn his head away from the road for very long, but he’s pretty sure Sam is giving him a funny look.

“You... want me to grab some of the cds from the back?”

Steve ducks his head. “Uh, I mean, like, go somewhere.”

“We... are going somewhere. We’re going to Detroit. Do you not wanna go to Detroit, Steve?”

This is _impossible_. Steve grits his teeth. How did Natasha expect him to do this? “No, I do, I do! I’m asking, uh. Do you wanna, maybe, we could go somewhere in Detroit. Together. And hear music.”

“Hear music.”

“Y’know, they must have bands playing. It’s Saturday.” He waves a hand airily in an attempt to make it seem like no big deal, but his palms are sweaty, and he ends up wiping it awkwardly on the steering wheel. He waits. The highway splits into a couple different tracks here, and he has to keep his eyes on the exit. He takes the turn, waiting for an answer.

“Sam?”

Steve feels the warmth of Sam getting in his personal space before Sam touches him, so he doesn’t jump, not quite, but he is still _very surprised_ by Sam leaning over and putting a hand on his thigh and saying earnestly and low and not a little smugly into Steve’s ear, “Like... a date?”

“YES, LIKE A DATE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO ON A DATE, OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE,” Steve says in a rush and way too loud. Sam _does_ jump and starts belly laughing at the same time, and Steve can feel himself turning bright fucking red but there’s nothing he can do. He slumps in his seat, trying not to pout and failing. “Sam, help, I’m very very bad at this. Save me from myself, please.” He lets out a little sound that isn’t quite a whimper. It’s more of a mewl, like the sound of a kitten that doesn’t know how it’s supposed to walk but is trying anyway out of sheer desperation.

Sam’s laughing so hard that he starts snorting and covering his face with his hands. “Oh man, Steve, I’m— _hnnrk—_ I’m sorry. I had to— _hnnrk_ —watch you squirm, man. That was priceless. Woo! Hahahaaa.” He starts wiping his eyes.

“All right, all right.”

“Oh god, the look on your face. Whee hee hee. Oh, I should’ve got the camera out.”

“Do you want to go on a damn date with me, you heartless jerk,” Steve says, embarrassed, and he hears Sam’s little happy sigh. He glances over: Sam is grinning.

“I would like nothing better,” Sam says. “Really. It’s sweet of you to ask.” He folds his arms. “Want me to see what’s playing?”

*

It turns out that what’s playing is a big concert in the Joe Louis Arena, and there are a handful of tickets left in the back rows. Steve doesn’t mind being far from the stage; in fact, he’s privately quite grateful that they’ll be near an exit. It sounds like it’s going to be a big crowd.

“What’s this dame’s name again?” Steve says as they’re walking from the car. “Goo-goo?”

“Gaga,” Sam corrects him. “Lady Gaga. You haven’t heard of her yet?”

Steve shrugs. “I guess no one had told me to put her on the list.”

“Yeah, man, that’s because everyone assumed you’d be hearing her _everywhere._ ”

“What kind of music is it?”

Sam thinks about this. “It’s dance music, mostly. They play her a lot in the clubs I go to. When, uh, I go to clubs.”

“Clubs? Like... for dancing?”

“Yeah.” Sam coughs. He gets that strained look on his face, like he can’t decide whether or not to belabor a point. “But, I mean... they play her especially in the clubs _I_ go to. Gay clubs, Steve. She’s kind of a gay icon.”

They jog up the steps, and Sam shows an usher their tickets using his phone. The usher does a double take when she sees who Sam is with, but she doesn’t say anything. Her name badge says LAKEESHA in trim black lettering. She smoothes her jacket down with her free hand as she says, “Back row. Take that staircase just over there, please. Um. Enjoy the show.”

Sam bumps his shoulder as they climb the stairs. “What do you think that was about?”

“No idea,” Steve says, but his stomach feels a little weird. He feels pretty sure that his being here surprised that girl, like—she thought he might not belong here. “Whoa.”

They stop at the top of the stairs. From up here, the Joe Louis Arena is pretty obviously a sports center. It’s staggeringly huge, and right now the whole great circuit of stands is packed with screaming fans and glittering with multicolored moving lights. Smoke machines are starting up around the performance area. The noise is incredible.

“Hey,” Sam says, slipping his hand on the small of Steve’s back, “you okay with this?”

Steve takes a deep breath. He makes himself smile. He sees their empty seats just in front of them; they’re sitting literally by the door. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

They’re a little late, so the lights are already down, for which Steve is grateful. Sam slides into his seat first, giving Steve the aisle. Their arms brush on the armrest, and Steve feels warmed by the intimacy. He lets himself settle.

Then it starts, and Steve has never seen anything like it in his entire life.

The show opens with a wall of noise and color, beautiful dancers of both sexes dressed like hotbox girls all leaping around with multicolored objects that flash and shine—and then the Lady herself, winged, carried in by a matched pair of lovely men. The music swells, a thumping bass line providing a beat for the gyrating dancers, and Gaga begins to sing. Everything is sparkling and bright and loud, and it makes Steve so happy that he feels his cheeks suddenly wet.

Sam leans over as bubbles float up from behind Gaga’s back. “Steve, how you feeling?”

Steve swallows the lump in his throat. “Wonderful,” he whispers back. “Oh, it’s wonderful.”

Lady Gaga has a very good singing voice, Steve thinks; it reminds him a little of Josephine Baker—if Baker’d had an endless crew of half-naked backup dancers and a fortune to blow on costumes and lights. It’s very sexy. But more than anything, through all the costume changes and light effects and dance numbers, it reminds him of _him_ , of all the nights on tour in that sweaty red-white-and-blue outfit, and how it felt to make a crowd roar, and passing time with the girls after the show. And something about it reminds him, too, of the little dives in Brooklyn where he and Bucky could go to dance together, when Steve was well enough. No wonder they play her music in the gay clubs now, Steve thinks.

When the lights come up for intermission, the first thing Sam does is lean over and grin. “So?” he says eagerly. “Do you like it?”

Steve looks up slowly. “I love it,” he says. “I had no idea there was music like this. I had no idea so many people would like—something like this. It—feels like I belong here.”

Sam whistles. “Wow. That’s a ringing endorsement from Captain America.”

“Quit it,” Steve says, laughing, and then the laughter dies in his throat as he sees that someone is staring at them: they’ve been noticed. Across the aisle, there’s a young black girl with natural hair dyed pale blue, staring right at Steve, looking for all the world like a deer in headlights. Steve looks down: there’s a hand entwined in hers. A white girl with half her hair shaved away and the rest dyed grey, dressed all in spiked black leather and wearing a collar.

The blue-haired girl sees Steve noticing their hands, and she yanks her hand away from the other girl’s and turns away, and Steve feels his heart fall right out of his chest.

“Steve, what,” Sam says, and Steve turns to look him full in the face. They’re sitting very close, and ordinarily that would make Steve’s heart sing, but right now he has to fix this, because this is a disaster. “Steve,” Sam says again. “You look like someone _died_. What’s wrong?”

“The girl in the lobby,” Steve says. “Remember how she looked at me?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Like I _didn’t belong here_ ,” Steve says, his voice thick, but it’s _urgent_ that he make Sam understand. “Sam, they think I don’t belong. They think I’m not—one of them.”

“Steve, _who_ does?”

Steve swallows. “Those girls over there—don’t look. They were holding hands until they saw me noticing.” Sam is searching his eyes, his handsome face drawn tight, worried. “You said she’s an icon for people like us. Those girls came here to be safe. And they think—” he can’t even finish the sentence, his voice is too choked.

“They think Captain America wouldn’t want them to be gay,” Sam finishes. “Oh, god.” He covers his mouth with his hand. “What are you going to do?”

Steve’s mouth feels dry. “I have to tell them the truth,” he says, and he stands up, hearing Sam say “Whoa, whoa—” but his heartbeat is pounding in his ears, just like it always does when he knows that something is desperately important.

“Excuse me,” he says, stopping a couple feet away. “Hi. I’m sorry for being rude before. I didn’t mean to stare. I’m Steve.” He holds out his hand for the blue-haired girl to shake.

She pauses before taking it, slow and suspicious. She looks frightened and a little angry, as if she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I’m Jennifer,” she says. Her handshake is firm but brief.

Her girlfriend nods at Steve. “I’m Starr.”

Steve feels Sam at his back, hears Sam about to open his mouth and make some introduction and back up this horrible awkwardness that Steve has started, and he can’t let Sam down but he doesn’t know how to do this, so he just says, “I’m bisexual.”

Both girls’ eyes bug out. “Uh, what?” Jennifer says, as Starr begins coughing.

“I’m bisexual,” Steve says again, more firmly this time. “I just thought—you should know. I, um, date both women and men.”

“Okay,” Jennifer says, realization creeping into her voice. “So when you were staring, you weren’t—it’s not because—”

“In fact, he’s on a date right now,” Sam says, stepping into the light. “Sam Wilson. Nice to meet you ladies.”

Starr covers her mouth and whispers to Jennifer, _“Did you plan this?”_

“How are you enjoying the concert?” Steve says. “It’s my first time hearing the Lady.”

“Lady Gaga,” Sam mutters, shaking his head fondly. “Her stage name is _Lady Gaga_ , Steve.”

Starr looks uncertain of what to say, but Jennifer blurts out, “It’s like my fourth time seeing it. I love the Artpop tour. Starr and I actually came in from out of town. We—don’t get to see each other much around our parents.” She takes a breath. “Are you really bisexual, Mr.—I mean, Captain—”

“Please call me Steve,” he says. “And yes. I really am.” He feels so relieved, his chest just steadily cracking open, letting so much out into the glitter-filled air.

“Why don’t we take a picture together?” Sam says. “A couple pictures, so we can all remember meeting each other.”

“Sick,” Starr says, and pulls out her iPhone. “Let’s be kissing in it, Jenn.”

Jennifer raises her eyebrows. “I don’t know...”

“Great idea,” Sam says. “I got my phone ready. Lean in, everybody. One...”

Steve leans his head back, looking at his own startled face in two cameras at once as Starr and Sam both hold up their phones to fit all four faces in the screen.

“Two...”

He looks at Sam, so brave and beautiful, and wants nothing more than to know what it’s like to kiss him. He leans in.

“Three...”

At the last second, he thinks— _No, he wouldn’t want_ —he leans back—

“Kiss!”

And Sam leans right back in as he clicks the button, catching just the side of Steve’s mouth at first— _kissing_ him, and then he kisses him again, and Steve didn’t know what he imagined but he couldn’t have imagined this, soft and sure and so very Sam. It’s just like the both of them—because if Steve jumps from any height, Sam will catch him.

“Whoa,” Jennifer says, giggling. “Uh, y’all want me to take one of you?”

Steve looks up, a bit dazed, and grins. “Yes, please,” he says, and jumps again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been to the Joe Louis Arena, so I apologize if I described it wrong. I also missed the Artpop Tour (woe!), so I hope my description approximately fits from the research I did! Allegedly, Gaga did really perform there in May 2014. Title is of course taken from the lyrics to "Applause," by Lady Gaga.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading this!!


	7. Just run across states, make it up as we go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Sam hang out with their new friends.

“—you did _not_ —”

“What else were we gonna do? We were in a fucking alley in the middle of Greenpoint at two a.m. with no clothes and a very suspicious banana. We ran, buck-ass naked around some apartment blocks and then across a bunch of backyards, pulling sheets off clotheslines as we went.”

Jenn’s jaw drops as Starr sputters, “And the cops didn’t get you?”

“Hold _up_ ,” Sam says, putting his hand on Steve’s shoulder, and _god,_ it’s like Steve’s whole _body_ is just attuned to that touch now, like a wire suddenly able to conduct electricity. He leans into it, and he feels Sam’s smile next to his ear. “First of all, what was the banana for?” Starr giggles. “None of your sass, young lady,” Sam adds. “This is a serious question. And while we’re on the subject, why exactly was it suspicious?”

Steve grins. “I guess the cops thought it was a gun,” he says, and slips an arm around Sam’s waist. They’re all a little giddy from the show, stumbling across the parking lot in a haze of joy; Starr and Jenn are holding hands, almost skipping to keep up with Sam and Steve. Their backpacks bounce up and down. “I mean, it kinda looked like a pistol, I guess. Or maybe they just wondered what two naked fellas would be getting up to in a darkened alleyway with a banana.”

“Could be anything,” Jenn murmurs, eyes twinkling.

“But of course Captain America would never do anything illegal,” Starr says, smirking, and for an instant Steve smarts from the familiar wound, rubbed raw by all the times he had to be Captain America instead of Steve Rogers, hiding his real self in the stars and stripes. But then he sees the look on Starr’s face and realizes—she’s joking. In fact, she’s saying exactly the opposite. Steve Rogers _is_ Captain America, and Steve Rogers did all kinds of illegal shit. She’s being funny.

She gets the joke.

“Come on, man,” Sam says, bumping him gently with his hip. “Tell us about the banana.”

“I don’t know if I should,” Steve says. “It’s kind of—”

“Is it a sex thing?” Jenn interrupts, looking a little too eager. “Because we’re all pretty much assuming it’s a sex thing.”

“It’s not a sex thing!” Steve says. “I mean, it is a little bit. But not how you’re thinking.”

“I knew it,” Sam says. “Steve Rogers: vintage pervert.”

“ _Look_ ,” Steve says, as Starr and Jenn both double over laughing, “I had heard that bananas were good for keeping yourself _going_ , okay? So I was going to eat one before getting down to business. Nothing funny about it! The only place it was going was in my mouth.” That sends all three of Steve’s companions into loud whoops of laughter, and Steve sighs. “I guess I coulda phrased that better.”

“Who the— _hee hee hee_ —” Sam wipes his eyes. “Who the heck told you that bananas keep it up, man?”

“Oh, what, like you’ve never done weird things to make sex better.”

“I have not,” Sam returns. “I have very normal sex.”

Steve isn’t sure whether Sam is joking, and he feels a sudden lurch in his stomach, but then Jenn pipes up, “And what exactly is _normal_ gay sex?”

“Regulation gay sex,” Sam says, his face totally deadpan. “Everything up to code. Only one giraffe, and all the feather dusters are asbestos-free. Horizontal positions only, except where otherwise mandated by law.”

Steve laughs in relief. “Right, because you have to be upright at all times on Memorial Day.”

Sam nods seriously. “Yes, it’s important to be able to salute during the act.”

And _that’s_ just—Steve suddenly has an intensely vivid mental image of Sam standing naked and at attention, waiting for Steve’s salute, and Steve saluting from his knees, ready to open his mouth and—

Steve shakes his head, clears the image from his mind. He’s suddenly so hard he can barely walk. He coughs.

“Uh, hey, our car is right there,” Steve says. “You dames want a lift anywhere?”

Jenn says, “Hell yeah,” at exactly the same time that Starr squeaks, “Did he just call us _dames?_ ”

“Sorry, old habits die hard,” Steve says, a bit taken aback by Starr’s surprise. Natasha just smirks when he forgets himself and says it, but he knows words can mean different things to young people. “Is that—a bad word?”

“Nah, it just makes you sound like you’re _super_ old,” Starr says, “instead of the fun-loving youngster you apparently are.” She grins, and Steve grins back, pleased.

“Hey,” Jenn says, eyes suddenly bright with mischief. “Y’all wanna go dancing?”

*

When they get to the club, the bouncers don’t ask Steve or Sam for i.d., but they make Jenn and Starr dig all through their backpacks to pull out driver’s licences, which they take a very long time to inspect. Steve watches one of them bend Jenn’s licence back and forth and then hold it under a lavender-colored flashlight. The guy takes a really long time staring at her and then at her picture again. He’s frowning. Steve does not like this guy.

Steve draws himself up to his full height. “Pretty fancy technology.”

The bouncer doesn’t look up. “Mm.”

Steve clears his throat. “Especially for a dance hall.”

The bouncer looks at him—looks _up_ at him, and then his expression flickers. He seems to recollect himself. “Yeah.” He hands back the card. “Okay.” He’s still frowning at Jenn, but he waves them through.

When they’ve slipped through some black curtains to what passes for a cloakroom in this joint, Steve leans down to Jenn and whispers, “Problem with the card?”

She grimaces. “It’s not the card.” Her eyes flick over to Sam, who just nods tightly. “At least, I don’t think it is. This happens at gay clubs sometimes. Like, gay _men’s_ clubs. They don’t really like having lesbians around, so they make a big deal out of it. It’s whatever. We’re here now.”

“You wanted to come here, though?” Steve frowns. “You didn’t just do this because—I mean, we can go—”

Jenn puts a hand on his forearm, stilling his protests, and what a weird sensation that is, suddenly. He’s only been around the other Avengers or around Sam for so long; it’s like the way Pepper touches him. Gentle. Like a friend. The corner of his mouth curls up inadvertently.

“I wanted to come here,” Jenn says. “It’s ok. It’s gonna be cool.” She shrugs off her jacket, puts it in her bag, and then hands the backpack over to Starr, who gives it to the bag checker and waits for the claim tag. Starr’s stripped down to what looks to Steve like a black workout shirt and black leather pants. She catches Steve’s gaze and grins.

Sam’s voice is suddenly in Steve’s ear. “They know what they’re doing, Steve, it’s okay.” He puts an arm around Steve’s waist, and Steve leans into it again. He can’t get enough of feeling Sam’s hands on him, being close to him.

“I know. I just—don’t want any special treatment.” Steve remembers too vividly that morning at McDonald’s, when he chatted up the girl behind the counter, and how Sam chastised him for it afterward. But he hadn’t meant anything by it. He wishes he weren’t so recognizable.

“Hey.” Sam puts a gentle hand under his chin, tips his face up. “I think these kids just want to be your friend. Which is pretty special, but I don’t think it’s because of the stars and stripes. I think they like you.” He smiles.

“C’mon, lovebirds,” Jenn says, waving them over to the black curtains that separate the bag check from the club. “Let’s _party_.” Starr holds open the curtain for her; a burst of noise and heat comes through the opening, and then they vanish inside.

“I’ll be right with you, okay?” Sam says urgently, his voice suddenly serious. He moves his hand to slip it into Steve’s, interlacing his fingers. “You need to leave, say the word.”

Steve feels his heart going liquid. “You make me feel like the luckiest guy,” he says, and squeezes Sam’s hand. Sam squeezes back.

Inside, the noise is deafening, a throbbing beat overlaid with electronic clicks and whirrs and some sort of melodic instrumentation, all of it so loud that the singer’s voice is barely audible. The air is red. Directional lights flash over the floor, which is crammed with bodies, all of them rubbing and grinding against one another. Some people are making out; in the corners, Steve thinks he sees more than that going on. The smell of sex is intense, and of alcohol, and some other chemicals Steve doesn’t recognize. For an instant, his body goes ramrod straight, his mind immediately taking in the club’s layout, the possible exits.

Then he feels Sam squeeze his hand again for a long moment—and then again, also for a weirdly long time—and then a few more times—

He laughs. “Three long, long-short-long,” he says. “Yeah, Sam, I’m ok.” He turns around.

Sam’s eyes sparkle in the moving lights of the club. He’s standing very close to Steve, so that Steve can see the way his eyelashes curl, the bow of his upper lip, the slight dimple at the corners of his mouth as he smiles.

“You’re so beautiful,” Steve murmurs, and he can’t help himself, now that Sam’s done it to him, he tips his head down and presses his lips to Sam’s, his eyes fluttering closed. He feels Sam step even closer, press his whole body against Steve’s, and Steve groans, feeling Sam’s thighs against his own, feeling his stomach, the hard muscles of his chest. He’s gripping Sam’s hand tight, and he opens his mouth just a little, just tentatively, hoping—and he feels Sam’s tongue slip between his lips, and he’s _so hard_ , he could maybe just come in his pants right now.

The beat changes; then the lights do, too.

Sam pulls back. He looks a little drunk. “Let’s dance.” He backs onto the dance floor, pulling Steve into the press of bodies.

Steve loses track of time entirely. Hours must be going by, he knows, but he’s so overwhelmed with sensation: Sam’s hands caressing him; the smell of Sam’s skin; the strength of Sam’s hips as he grinds them against Steve’s, maddening, intoxicating; the thrumming of the music through Steve’s whole body; and under it all, a current of wild energy, of more than two hundred people packed together for the sheer animal pleasure of it.

He hears Starr and Jenn laughing nearby, and he turns to look: both of them are sweaty, eyes bright, hands all over each other, full to the brim with happiness. They see him and push their way through the crowd.

“Isn’t this dj _killer_ ,” Jenn laughs. “Fucking love her. _So_ lucky that she was playing tonight.”

“How you guys doing?” Starr says. “Having fun?”

Sam shows all his teeth in his smile, his expression just this side of wicked. “Hell yeah,” he says. “Just good _clean_ fun.”

It’s like a bucket of ice water. The moment dilates around Steve, stills him. Good clean fun. Because that’s the only kind of fun Captain America can have.

He realizes that he’s staring, sees Sam noticing the expression on his face, the way the tone of their interaction has suddenly shifted. Steve coughs, tries to keep it light.

“Jerk. I can have fun,” Steve says, wincing at his inability to keep the resentment out of his voice. “I’m off duty. No cameras.”

“Uh, there’s probably cameras,” Starr says, looking back and forth between them. “We live in an evil panopticon surveillance state or whatever. But don’t let that harsh your buzz, though.” She seems quizzical; she’s noticed, Steve thinks.

“This place is gonna close soon,” Jenn says. “You guys wanna head somewhere else?”

Steve thinks about that, suddenly feeling sad and tired. He wants to shake the feeling, but he doesn’t like that Sam teased him about his—wholesomeness. About Captain America’s wholesomeness. He hates that.

“Yeah, okay,” he says as evenly as he can. “Let’s go.”

It’s not that cold out, but the air feels chilly after the heat of the club. They drift apart a little as they come out the doors, meandering toward the parking lot. It’s a relief to get away from the crowd, but all Steve’s energy has dissipated, leaving behind an emptiness the grey dawn can’t fill. He can see Sam sending him worried looks out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of their new friends.

He pulls out the car keys. “Where can we drop you?” he says. “Is your hotel nearby?”

Starr and Jenn look at each other. Then Jenn looks at her shoes and lets her bag drop to the ground, and Starr’s face sort of crumples.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Sam says, soft, that comforting VA voice, and even though it’s not directed at him, Steve breathes a little easier. “You in trouble?”

Jenn doesn’t look up, but Starr replies, “It’s not just that we don’t see each other around our parents.”

“Starr,” Jenn says, but Starr keeps going.

“The Artpop tour, we’ve been following it instead of going home—”

“ _Starr_ ,” Jenn says again. Starr just shakes her head and then curls her arm around Jenn’s stomach, holding her close.

“I think we should tell them,” she says, and Jenn sighs heavily. There’s a long pause, and then Starr whispers something in Jenn’s ear that Steve doesn’t catch. Finally, Jenn looks up.

She leans her head back on Starr’s shoulder as she talks, an odd mixture of anxiety and of unselfconscious affection for her girlfriend. “We just finished third year of college. Out in Indiana. At school it’s okay—I’m in ethnomusicology and no one in _that_ department cares, and Starr does comp sci, and programmers are pretty chill about it. And, like, our roommates don’t mind too much anymore, mostly. But if Starr goes home, her parents will probably—” she swallows. “She won’t be able to—”

“We’ll be apart for a while,” Starr says, rocking Jenn back and forth. “Let’s put it that way.”

“Mostly we sleep on buses between cities,” Jenn says. “Buses are cheap.”

Steve looks at Sam. His face is drawn, his brow furrowed. He shakes his head at Steve: _No_. Which Steve guesses means, _No, we’re not sticking these kids on a bus_.

He folds his arms. “It’s the middle of the night. I’m sure there are plenty of rooms at the motel where we’re gonna go.”

“Which we will pay for,” Sam adds. “In case that wasn’t clear. Please, don’t argue. I’m not turning two kids out into the night. I don’t think we could live with ourselves.”

They both wait. Jenn and Starr look at each other, their expressions shifting rapidly, seemingly in silent conversation.

“Okay,” Jenn says, untangling herself from Starr. She manages a weak smile. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem,” Steve says, opening the door. “Motel 6, here we come.”

*

Steve suggests that everyone wait in the car while he goes into the lobby. The night clerk definitely looks at Steve funny when he asks for two rooms, but he does it, and to Steve’s relief, he doesn’t ask any questions. He doesn’t feel like explaining himself to anyone else tonight, and he doesn’t want Starr and Jenn to be stared at.

He comes back to the car and drives around the side of the building. They park and get out of the car, Jenn and Starr with backpacks in tow, and he thinks, suddenly, about how little those bags must hold. The lights of the motel are an acidic tone that flattens everything to the same dull yellow, and there’s no sound nearby except the highway. It’s nearly dawn. 

When he hands over the keys to Jenn, she looks positively dumbstruck. “Room 204. We’re 110, so don’t worry, no one’s listening. And you’re paid up for two days, so you can sleep as late as you want.” He looks over at Starr; her face is doing something he can’t interpret. “You okay?”

Starr looks at Jenn, and then she suddenly throws her arms around Steve’s neck, burying her face in his chest. He feels a second _whump_ in his side, and Jenn is wrapping her skinny arms around him, too. He thinks one of them might be sniffling. His throat feels tight.

“I don’t care what anyone says about you, ever,” Jenn whispers. “You are _our_ Captain America.”

A surprised, strangled noise escapes Steve’s throat, and all he can manage to do is hug them both back, as gently as he can.

“Thank you,” Starr says, unwinding herself from his neck. She wipes her eyes. “Come knock before you go tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says. He looks at Sam. “Good night.”

*

The motel room is small and a little dingy; Steve dumps his bag down on the floor and just sits on the bed, overwhelmed and wrung out with all the feelings he’s had in such short succession.

The bed dips beside him. Sam puts a hand on his back.

“That was a really good thing to do,” he says. “Way to spend HYDRA’s cash.”

Steve snorts in brief amusement, but he doesn’t know what to say.

He hears Sam sigh, and then his hand is gone, the warm place on Steve’s back suddenly cold. “I think I upset you,” he says. “But I don’t know why.”

They sit for a minute. Steve thinks about how he can possibly say this. He feels so _ungrateful_ saying it. Sam is such a sweet, loving man. Steve should be over the moon, lit up with happiness, not weighed down by the little things. But the smaller he tries to make it, the more it balloons inside him, expanding and swelling until it’s all he can feel or think about.

“I just,” he says, hearing his own voice come out rough, “I’m not that guy, okay? I’m not—this is why I didn’t want—ugh.” He puts his face in his hands.

Sam’s voice is very small as he says, “You didn’t want to date me?”

Steve looks up immediately. Sam looks so scared, so fragile, and Steve can’t let that happen, can’t let something this stupid make Sam hurt like that. He just wraps his arms around Sam, pulls him in, as close as he dares, so close he can feel Sam’s heart pounding. Sam’s arms snake out and wrap around Steve’s neck, just like Starr’s had; the comparison makes Steve feel better, makes him feel the realness and earnestness of the touch. He can tell Sam how he feels, he really can.

He turns his face toward Sam’s ear. “First—I’m not gonna leave you, okay? I tried really hard to set up this date because I want to date you, Sam Wilson, and I don’t want you to think otherwise, not ever.” Sam laughs softly, and Steve squeezes him a little tighter. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Sam tucks his face into Steve’s shirt, and they stay like that for a couple minutes. Steve counts Sam’s breaths. He feels Sam’s heartbeat slow. His shirt reeks of the club, sweat and smoke and nameless other smells. He breathes in the still air of the motel.

He pulls back. Sam lets him go, his expression still a bit downcast, and Steve takes one of Sam’s hands in his. “Second.” He blows out a sigh. “I just don’t want you to think of me as—that image.”

Sam’s brow furrows. “Image?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You know. Wholesome Captain America, who never does anything bad or morally suspect or—or _queer_. The guy who would never fuck another guy in an alleyway. The guy who has—‘good clean fun,’ like you said.”

He sees Sam’s face change from worried to sheepish to relieved as he realizes what caused the problem. “Steve, man. I’m sorry. That was a joke. I didn’t mean for it to—”

“You don’t have to apologize—”

“Wait, please. I need to talk about this. I—earlier, Starr made a joke like that, I don’t remember—”

Steve feels a slow realization lighting the back of his brain. “She said Captain America would never do anything illegal.”

“Yeah, about the banana thing. And you seemed cool with it, so I thought it was fair game.” Sam looks so earnestly sorry, and Steve feels the beginnings of that sick guilty feeling in his stomach. “I wouldn’t have joked about that if I thought it would upset you. I’m sorry.”

Steve shakes his head, his eyes half-focused on the wall as he processes it. “No,” he says slowly, “no, you were right. I was okay with it when Starr said it.”

Sam jerks back a bit, unpleasantly surprised, Steve guesses. “Uh. Okay. I’m not sure what that means.”

“It means,” Steve says pensively, “that for some reason it bothers me when you do it.” He comes back to himself. He looks into Sam’s eyes. “Specifically you.”

Sam blinks, taking this in. “I don’t really know what to do with that, Steve.”

“I don’t either,” Steve says.

He looks down at their joined hands. What is it that bothers him so much when Sam teases him about this? Why just Sam? He always liked it when he got teased about it by—by Bucky—

“Steve,” Sam says, low and gentle. “You’re crying.”

He is, Steve realizes, lifting his free hand to touch his face. He wipes his cheeks and sniffles.

“Sorry,” he says. “I think it’s just been a long day. Lots of excitement.” He leans forward slowly, then, and leans his cheek down on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m not good at talking about this stuff, Sam. I know you are, but I’m just—I don’t know how, sometimes.”

He feels Sam wrap an arm around his shoulders, pull him in. “Talking about this stuff is hard. We don’t have to do everything at once.” He rubs his hand over Steve’s back, right between the shoulder blades. “When I said we should go slow, I didn’t just mean sex. It’s okay to take the emotional stuff slow, too. It doesn’t have to be a disaster that this upsets you. That’s just—” Sam pauses. “That’s just a fact. Right now, we can just be good to each other. Because we like each other. Right?”

Steve lifts his head up and looks at Sam, his handsome face soft and earnest. God, how did Steve get so lucky?

“Right,” Steve says. “Yes. Absolutely. Oh, Sam. I like you so much.”

That makes Sam smile. “Don’t get mushy on me, Rogers.” He looks a little nervous as he says it, like he’s not sure what kind of teasing is okay, so Steve squeezes his hand again.

“I won’t,” Steve says. “I think maybe I just need to sleep.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “Do you—um—do you want me to sleep in the other bed?”

Steve feels his heart sink. “No.” He touches Sam’s face. “Please.”

Sam catches his hand; then he smiles, leans forward, and kisses Steve, and it’s just as sweet as before, and Steve feels some of the weight on his chest dissolve. “I just wanted to check if you needed space,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to spoon you for weeks.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Steve says, “but it sounds great.”

*

Steve wakes up abruptly, the drowning dream again, and for a terrible moment there’s nothing to catch him—he’s just falling, falling, he can’t feel the sheets—

“Steve?” he hears in his ear, and then something warm and strong tightens around his waist, catching him, pulling him back.

“Steve, breathe, okay? Just breathe with me—in—now let it out—that’s good. One more. In... now out. You’re okay.”

He breathes. His heart stops hammering.

The arm pulls tighter. “You’re safe here.”

Barely awake, confused, exhausted, Steve nevertheless feels it in his bones.

“I’m safe,” he echoes. “Sam.”

“Yeah.”

Steve swallows. “Don’t let go.”

*

They doze until late morning, later than Steve has slept in a long time. He feels a little creaky when he gets up, but his skin is warm all over from sleeping in Sam’s embrace, and the hollowness of last night is gone. He showers before Sam wakes up, skipping the morning run in favor of going out to get Sam his coffee. When he gets back, Sam kisses him good morning and drinks half the coffee in one go.

They knock on 204, as promised; it takes a minute before the door opens, and when it does, Starr and Jenn both look like they’ve been doing things other than sleeping. Their stuff is strewn all over the room. They both, Steve thinks, have the glowing smiles of people who have recently gotten laid.

“Morning,” Jenn says. “You guys heading out?”

“Probably to Chicago,” Sam says. “Anything special we should see?”

“Deep dish pizza!” Starr calls from the floor. She’s typing away on her laptop. “More American than apple pie.”

“Will do,” Steve says. “Listen, I was thinking—you said you guys are in college, right? Starr, you do things with computers?”

Starr nods. “Yeah?”

“I haven’t called yet, but, uh—I’m pretty sure Stark Industries has summer internships for women who work with computers,” Steve says, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “If you want, I can make some calls. I don’t know how much they pay, but if you’re willing to sleep on a bus, you can probably find a place in New York that you can live with. Even a cheap place.”

He feels Sam’s eyes on him, approving, warming him from the inside out.

“Oh my god,” Jenn says. “Starr, did you hear that? Holy shit, that would be _amazing_ —”

“I am so glad I already started making you this thank-you present,” Starr says, taking something out of her laptop and fiddling with it. She gets up and comes over to the door. “Thank you,” she says. She hands the object over.

It’s a cd in a paper sleeve. The sleeve has lots of things written on it in a tight cursive. At the top, it says _Happy End_ , and at the bottom it says _< 3 Starr + Jenn._

“You made us a mixed cd,” Steve says, his smile getting bigger.

“Mix cd,” Sam says, voice fond.

“Don’t forget about us, okay?” Jenn says. “We’ll go clubbing again any time you want.”

“Yeah, let me give you my number,” Starr says. And then, with an uncanny look at Steve, she adds, “Call us if you need us.”

*

The highway is full of construction and potholes, so they crawl slowly through the traffic west from Detroit. Steve runs his fingers over the handwriting on the cd sleeve. The first words on the list are _Girlfriend / Icona Pop_ , any of which could be a band or a song or something else. Lots of other words look like women’s names to Steve.

“You wanna put that in?” Sam says, glancing over from the driver’s seat. “I’m curious. Unless you’re saving it.”

Steve takes the cd out and puts it reverently into the drive. “No. I’m not saving it.” But—part of him was, Steve thinks. That’s something he does, is save things. Something left over from long ago. And Sam knew that.

The drive whirrs. Track 01 comes on.

_Na na na na, na na na na_  
_Na na na na, na na na na_  
_All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend_  
_Down to ride till the happy end, is me and my girlfriend_  
_Where would you be, be without me_  
_We'll never find out_  
_What would I do, do without you_  
_We'll never know now_

“They made us a mix cd,” Steve says. “For us.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Friends do that.”

Steve turns the volume up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to thingswithwings for a thoughtful beta -- a lot of the feels in this chapter were added in response to those comments!
> 
> Lyrics in this chapter are by Icona Pop, from their song "Girlfriend."
> 
> Here, for your enjoyment, is the mix cd Starr & Jenn made for Sam & Steve. While I was careful only to use songs that were actually released by May 2014, some of them were released _in_ that month, meaning that Jenn and Starr must have been pretty cool to know about them. But, I mean, they are pretty cool. So.
> 
>  
> 
> **Happy End**  
> 
> 1\. Girlfriend / Icona Pop  
> 2\. 212 / Azealia Banks  
> 3\. I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You / Black Kids  
> 4\. Dance Dance Dance / Lykke Li  
> 5\. Glitter And Gold / Little Daylight  
> 6\. Fineshrine / Purity Ring  
> 7\. Fighting Fish / Dessa  
> 8\. Loose Lips / Kimya Dawson  
> 9\. Now, Now / St. Vincent  
> 10\. Travelling Woman / Bat For Lashes  
> 11\. Don’t Ask Me Why / Laura Marling  
> 12\. Dance Apocalyptic / Janelle Monáe  
> 13\. Ribs / Lorde  
> 14\. Do You Remember / Ane Brun  
> 15\. You Caught the Light / Chvrches  
> 16\. Take Me to Church / Neon Jungle  
> 17\. Call Your Girlfriend / Robyn  
> 18\. Don't Stop (Color on the Walls) / Foster The People  
> 19\. I Wanna Get Better / Bleachers 
> 
> _ <3 Starr + Jenn_
> 
>  
> 
> Update, March 12, 2017: [You can now listen to this playlist on Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/user/stillnotking/playlist/55AvtI3UFMvfJVFzMW20Wh)


	8. How can I hurt when holding you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Sam go to Chicago.

“Yeah, do you have anything available? I mean can you do anything?” Steve waves at Sam to turn the volume down a little bit so he can hear Pepper. Sam mouths, _But it’s the Beatles_ , and Steve just gives him his very best _Really?_ expression in return.

Pepper is making little humming noises to herself on the other end of the line. Steve wonders if she knows she does it. Then he realizes that of course she does, she’s dating Tony, which means Tony has probably tape recorded all of her hums and archived them somewhere to be stored against armageddon. “Sorry, I’m just trying to find the internship registration list... There we go. The first name was Starr? With two r’s?”

“That’s right.” Sam is waving at him again, pointing. There’s a sign by the side of the road advertising an exit for some town with a funny name. Steve shrugs.

“She’s already signed up, it looks like.”

Steve frowns. “That’s impossible. I only told her about the program this morning.” Sam’s waving is becoming increasingly emphatic, and he’s rubbing his stomach. _Donuts_ , he mouths. Steve nods. He’s basically always ready for donuts. “How could she have—”

Pepper’s laughter interrupts him. “Oh, she’s good,” she says. She sounds delighted. “She hacked the registration list. She’s written your name and Sam’s under her references, which ought to be impossible because neither of you are in the approved referee database, unless you recently became university administrators when I wasn’t looking. And she added a suggested income.”

Steve smirks. “Dare I ask?”

“ ‘One million internets,’ ” Pepper says. “She’s a firecracker.”

“Takes one to know one,” Steve retorts, and Pepper laughs again.

“If she’s capable of hacking Stark software, even the low-level stuff, I’m sure we can find a position for her. And of course we’ll pay her. I imagine it’ll be more advanced than the standard-issue internship, actually. Particularly because Tony will want to know exactly how she hacked him.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Of course he will. Hey, thank you so much, Pepper. This means a lot.” He looks over at Sam as they turn slowly off the interstate and onto a smaller highway. He gives him the thumbs-up. Sam grins. _Donuts_ , he mouths again, and then makes an exploding gesture with his free hand.

“You just travel safe. Oh, I almost forgot—text me your hotel address when you know it. Tony and Rhodey want to send you some cds, too. They got a little competitive when they heard I’d sent you mine.”

“Oh god.”

“Don’t worry, Rhodey actually has excellent taste in music. I make no promises about Tony.”

“Get that tattooed somewhere.”

Pepper’s voice turns suddenly sultry through the blips of cell phone cutout. “—have to—until you come to California, Steve.”

Steve grips the phone a little too hard for a second and has to catch himself. “I’m afraid I missed the beginning of that promise, Pepper.”

She just laughs. “Oh, and one more thing: Rhodey says to tell Sam that he watched some clips of the Battle of the Potomac, and that his flying is ace.”

In his peripheral vision, Steve sees Sam suddenly go wide-eyed and start glancing back and forth from the road to the phone. Steve waves at him, mouthing _I’ll tell you in a sec_. Sam just shakes his head urgently. Steve sighs.

“Pepper, I gotta go. We have some kind of donut emergency over here.”

“Well, have a wonderful time. Don’t forget that address.”

“I won’t.” He clicks the phone shut. “What?”

“Please tell me what she just said,” Sam squeaks. “Because I am too afraid to believe my own ears.”

“If you’re this hyped up, maybe we should wait until we—” Steve looks up to see that they’re pulling into a parking lot along the side of the highway, in front of a brown and yellow sign that says SWEETWATER’S DONUT MILL. “—pull over.”

Sam clicks the engine off immediately and turns his whole body to face Steve. “Tell me.”

“Um.” Steve chuckles nervously. “Okay. She said, uh, that Jim—I mean Rhodey—watched some clips of you flying when we were at the Triskelion, and he said to tell you, your flying is ace.”

The look on Sam’s face is like nothing Steve has ever seen before.

“He said that,” Sam says. “He said that about _me_. He said to tell _me_ that.”

“Yes.”

“ _Colonel James Rhodes_ said that.”

“Sam, are you okay?”

Sam just stares for a moment, wide-eyed, looking like he might hyperventilate or throw up or both, and then he makes a _whoop_ noise and flings himself back in his seat, laughing. “I don’t know how to explain it, man. Colonel Rhodes was fucking _legend_ in the Air Force. I saluted him once at the Academy—I don’t even know why he was on the base, maybe just doing an inspection. I never forgot it. He was everything I wanted to be. A real American hero. And _Colonel Rhodes_ says my flying is _ace_.” He shakes his head. “Man. I’m gonna be riding high on that one for a _while_.”

Then he turns to look at Steve again, and the gleam of joy in his eyes takes Steve’s breath away.

He slaps Steve’s thigh. “C’mon, man, let’s celebrate with some donuts! These suckers are bigger than your _head_.” And with that, he opens the door and fairly leaps to the ground, skipping toward the shop as if his toes don’t quite touch the gravel.

Steve can’t take his eyes off Sam’s face. He slowly unbuckles his seatbelt, puts his phone away. His pulse is pounding. What is it about that expression, he thinks, about the way Sam talked about Jim...?

And then with a rush, he has it. He knows why this is making his heart race. Because this is what hero worship looks like on Sam’s face, and _Steve’s never seen it before_.

He’s never seen it before, because that _isn’t_ how Sam feels about Steve.

The thought is such a relief and a shock that he gets a sudden chill all over, even though the midday sun is warm on his skin as he walks to the shop door.

*

“Okay,” Steve says, “you weren’t kidding when you said these are bigger than my head.”

They’re back in the car, because Sam didn’t want to end up stuck in Chicago rush hour, which means Steve is now trying to figure out how to eat his donut in the passenger seat without a repeat performance of Operation Donut: Love Juice Misfire. It doesn’t help that the donut, whose flavor label simply read “Cloud,” is filled and coated with a shiny white cream exactly the color of somebody’s jazz.

Steve sneaks a look at Sam, who is somehow handling both a steering wheel and a massive green-and-black iced “Grasshopper” donut, which is oozing equally lurid green cream, without either steering them off the road or spilling a drop on his shirt.

It’s not fair. He sighs.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Sam says, and that casual use of _babe_ hits Steve low and warm in the belly. He files that feeling away to think about later.

“You gonna be mad at me if we have to clean the upholstery again?”

Sam grins. “Before I answer, just to be clear: now that we’re kinda dating, I don’t have to pretend I don’t hear those perfect set-up lines, right? Cause I _really_ wanna spike that one in for the score.”

“Aw, Sam,” Steve says, peeling back the wax paper around his donut and keeping his voice casual. “You know you can score on me any time you want.”

And just like Steve predicted, Sam whips his head around in shock, which is the precise moment that Steve steadies, aims, and bites into the donut.

This time, when they pull the car over to clean the cream off of Sam’s shirt, they’re _both_ cracking up.

*

“Chicaaaago, Chicaaaago’s a wonderful town,” Sam sings as they turn down the strip. “You ever seen the windy city before, Steve?”

“We drove through it at night, I think,” Steve says, pressing his nose to the window. “On the tour bus. But usually I was chatting with whichever of the girls was awake.”

“Chatting?” Sam says, eyebrows raised. “Or, like— _chatting?_ ”

Steve laughs. “Just talking, Sam. Not that the girls didn’t get up to some shenanigans now and then, on and off the bus. But not with me. I was—focused somewhere else.”

“Peggy,” Sam says knowingly, and something about hearing her name right now makes Steve’s heart twist. “Hey, I’m sorry,” Sam adds just as quickly. “We don’t have to talk about the past. Look at this.” He gestures to the windshield, and the gleaming shadows of buildings beyond.

Steve lets himself look at the future.

Chicago is broad and tall, with soaring skyscrapers and roaring trains. The whole city thrums with life, not in the close, muttering, intimate way of New York, but in a great expanse of reverberating steel and wind. More than anything he’s seen so far since he woke up, it looks to Steve like a future that someone from his time would’ve imagined.

Sam’s watching him; he can feel his eyes. Steve turns back toward him. “It’s beautiful,” he says. “Do you have a poem for this one too?”

He meant it as a joke, but Sam’s gaze softens to the middle distance; and then, as they drive past clothing shops and pizza parlors, ritzy hotels and brass-fronted office buildings, Sam says:

“ _Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning._

 _Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities_...”

Steve clutches at his chest, at the sudden ache there. It’s the feeling that’s been growing in him these last days on the road, a feeling about Sam’s inner beauty and grace, he thinks—but now he recognizes that it’s a feeling about something else, too, because he’s _had_ this feeling before, he had it the first time he heard those words.

“I know that poem,” he murmurs. “ _Under the smoke_...”

“Under the smoke,” Sam says, nodding, and they finish the poem together, Sam’s voice surer than Steve’s as Steve plucks at the distant memory:

> Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,  
>  Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,  
>  Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,  
>  Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,  
>                     Laughing!  
>  Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

They’re silent for a minute, and then Steve exhales, loud and long.

“I didn’t know _you_ liked poetry,” Sam says.

“That’s Carl Sandburg,” Steve says, looking up. “I think that poem’s about as old as me. Somebody in the neighborhood had an old dog-eared copy—the collection was called _Chicago_ , I think? An artist who lived a few blocks down. Venetia, she called herself. God, I haven’t thought of her in years. Anyway, she was old and liked having me and Bucky around, I guess because we made some noise around the place, so sometimes we’d go and she’d put on some records and we’d just chat, or she’d read to us. She taught me to paint.” He adds this airily, like it’s no big deal, trying not to let on that it’s a fucking _big deal_. He misses her suddenly and powerfully, and he can remember the smell of her studio: oils and the tang of turpentine; the sour reek of cat piss from the neighborhood toms and the old plates of fish she laid for them; rose grenadine and brandy on her breath.

Sam is quiet while Steve savors the memory, but when he opens his eyes, he thinks Sam looks sad.

“I’m here, Sam,” Steve says. “I’m here with you. I’m in the present. I promise.” He reaches over and puts a hand on Sam’s leg reassuringly.

Sam’s mouth twists up in a half-smile. “No you’re not,” he says. “Fortunately for you, I know a little something about that. And anyway, I brought it up.” He turns the wheel; they’re pulling into a hotel garage. They pause for a moment while Sam rolls down the window and gets a ticket from a machine. After the bar lifts and they’ve driven around this underground labyrinth long enough to find a parking space, Sam turns the car off and looks at Steve.

The garage is still. Sam’s eyes are wide and warm, patient as always. It feels like time has suddenly caught up with them. Steve remembers how tender and how frustrated Sam looked last night. _Do you want me to sleep in the other bed?_ Sam had said, and Steve had been surprised, because most of the time when people give Steve space they’re not doing it to be nice, they’re doing it because they’re angry or afraid. But Sam—he understands space. He knows how to be close and how to be far away. Here in the car, small and huddled in the driver seat, his chest rising and falling slowly, Sam nevertheless looks like he could spread his wings at any moment and lift off into the clouds.

He’s waiting.

Steve’s gotta be the one to bridge the gap, he realizes.

He reaches out and touches Sam’s face. “Hey, sugar,” he says, blushing as the word slips out. “How’re you doing?”

Sam turns his face, slowly, and he kisses Steve’s palm. Steve sighs at the touch. “I’m okay,” Sam says. “We had kind of a wild night. And I think maybe I’m starting to crash from that sugar high.” Then he shakes his head, peeling Steve’s hand away and holding it with his own. “I’m _definitely_ not down from that high of Colonel Rhodes’ compliment, though. Damn.”

“You wanna check in and take a nap or something?”

Sam considers. While he’s considering, his stomach gurgles loudly.

They both laugh. “I guess I’m a little hungry,” Sam says. “Let’s check in, leave our bags at the desk, and get you your very first Chicago-style pizza. How’s that?”

“Great,” Steve says. “And we gotta text Pepper. Jim and Tony are gonna send us some mixed cds, too.”

Sam’s eyes go wide, and then he takes a deep breath and nods slowly to himself. “Okay, that’s okay. I can definitely handle having a mix cd in my car that was made by Colonel James Rhodes. Yup. Not a big deal at all.”

Laughing, knowing it’s a risk as he does it, Steve punches Sam gently in the arm. “Hey, you’re gonna make me jealous, Sam.” He pouts a bit, and bats his eyelashes, just to make it extra clear that he’s joking.

But Sam takes it the right way. “I didn’t hear _you_ offer to make me a mix cd, Rogers.” He grins, and then he leans over and kisses Steve’s cheek.

Then, as Sam pauses at Steve’s pouty face, his expression turns soft. Gently, wetly, he kisses Steve. He spends a long time exploring with the tip of his tongue, and then sucks at Steve’s previously pouty lower lip until Steve groans and fists his hands in Sam’s tshirt.

“I will make you a mix cd,” Steve gasps, when Sam finally breaks away. “As many mix cds as you want. Fuck.”

Sam just looks smug. “Come on, let’s get to that pizza.”

*

If the hotel concierge is startled to see Captain America and the Falcon arrive unannounced, she hides it pretty well. They get checked in with minimal fuss, which is something Steve appreciates; he’s still not quite used to being stared at in public. They give Pepper the hotel name by sending her a selfie taken in front of its sign. Steve makes bunny ears behind Sam’s head, because Nat taught him to do it and it’s hilarious.

They don’t have to walk too far to get to the pizza place Sam wants to take him to. Everything inside is very red, with glass lamps hung low over the booths. As soon as they enter, they’re intercepted by a man in a suit—the owner, he says, introducing himself with a hasty, sweaty handshake, and it’s just _wonderful_ that Captain America and his friend have come to try his pizza, he knows they won’t be disappointed. Steve feels his chest tense, but he thinks this guy is just startled by their presence and maybe a bit anxious himself. So Steve makes himself smile, and he allows the guy to seat them by the window, where tourists occasionally stop outside to point and snap pictures.

Fortunately, the waitress is entirely unimpressed and takes their order with ruthless efficiency. Steve immediately likes her. They get one “Chicago classic” deep-dish pizza—a medium, because when Steve suggests to the waitress that they might be hungry enough for a large, the look of sheer disdain she levels at him makes it clear that even Captain America is not up to taking on a Giordano’s large stuffed crust pie. They also get two fountain sodas, and then they are mercifully left alone for a very long time while their pizza bakes.

“This sure is something,” Steve says, poking at his straw as it bobs in his cup. “Everything is so _big_.”

“Big?” Sam says, slurping at his soda.

“Yeah, I dunno,” Steve says. “There’s just—so _much_ of everything. So much food, such huge drinks, so many _people_. It’s a lot.”

“About the people thing,” Sam says. “I was wondering about that ever since Niagara. I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, the population of the United States in 1940, which is just before you deployed, was about a hundred and thirty-two million people. In 2010, it was almost three hundred and nine million people.” He slurps his drink again. “So to you, even though you were a city-dweller, it still probably seems like there are _three times_ as many people as there ought to be.”

Steve cocks his head. “Huh. I never thought of it like that.” He sips his soda. “It doesn’t seem like a lot to you?”

Sam considers. “No, I guess it does. And you’re not the only one to come back from the battlefield with a little less tolerance for crowds. I see it all the time at the VA. I feel it too, sometimes.” Sam adds this last part a little hastily, as if to reassure Steve that he understands how Steve feels. Steve can’t help but smile, even though the thought makes him sad. He doesn’t want anyone to have to feel that awful anxious, sick feeling.

“It’s been worse since I woke up, for sure,” Steve says. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s because of New York, though. The Chitauri. That was a helluva thing to wake up to. It left me a little afraid, I think.”

“Afraid there’s too many of the enemy to defeat?”

“Afraid there’s too many civilians to save.”

Sam shakes his head. “Yeah. I hear that.” Then he looks up, suddenly, and his face has gone very stern. Steve waits. He thinks Sam is deciding whether to tell him something.

“That’s how I lost Riley,” he says at last, and Steve feels it like a cold bucket of water. He sits up straight.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he reaches his hand across the table, palm up.

After a moment, Sam takes it. They hold hands in silence, just looking at each other.

There’s a small _snap!_ sound, and they both look out the window: someone has taken a picture of them holding hands. It’s a tourist in a bright orange leather jacket with a floral print fanny pack. She gives them a thumbs-up.

The seriousness of the moment pops like a balloon, and they both laugh.

“Hey, Sam, listen,” Steve says, suddenly feeling that the time is right for this. “I know you said go slow. And I will do that, to the best of my ability, because you’re worth going slow and doing everything right. But—I don’t know how to say this...” Sam has an odd expression on his face. Cautiously amused, maybe? Steve takes a deep breath.

“I’m a fast guy. In every sense of the word. I used to pick up fellas in back alleys in Brooklyn all the time when I was young, not because I had to but because I _liked_ it. And when I fell for Peggy, I did that fast, too. I’m not a guy who needs a lot of time to make up my mind.

“So what I’m saying is...” He wraps his other hand around Sam’s, too, and bites his lip. “I’m saying, I will go as slow as you want to go. With—with talking, with feelings, with sex, all of it. But you don’t ever need to worry that you’re going too fast for me. Okay? Whatever you need, whatever you want... when you’re ready, it’s all here. You just come get it.” He leans down and kisses Sam’s hand, which is maybe overselling the point, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Sam’s jaw is quivering a little bit, and then Steve sees that tears are spilling over onto his cheeks. “Oh Sam,” Steve says, panicked. “Oh fuck, I’m sorry. Shit.”

“Shh, babe, don’t freak out,” Sam says in a choked voice. “These are good tears.” He wipes his cheeks with his free hand. “Agggh. Jeez. You don’t know—” He shakes his head. Then a thought seems to strike him. “Did you really just say ‘when you’re ready, come get it’? Did you—do you know that song?”

“No?” Steve says. “Is this bad?”

“This is an important part of your continuing musical education,” Sam says. “Selena Gomez is not skippable, especially if you’re gonna go around saying shit like that. I’m putting it on your list.”

“Got it,” Steve nods. “Selena Gomez. Roger that.”

Sam chuckles. Then he says, “I’m not ready to talk about Riley.”

Steve nods. “Sure, okay.” He squeezes Sam’s hand again.

Sam smiles softly. “But I think maybe it’s time I told you about the guy from Cornell.”  
  
*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't where I originally intended to leave the story, but I think it's time to bring the story to a close, for a few reasons. For one, I'm in a different life place than I was when I started writing it, and so is the MCU; the feelings that inspired me to write it have changed (though Sam/Steve is still always and forever my otp, THEY ARE ROMANTICALLY IN LOVE AND MARRIED ETERNALLY, OKAY). It's also just been a long-ass time since I started writing it.
> 
> For another thing, America is different now. To be clear: part of this story was always going to be how fucked up America is. But the future that Sam and Steve were driving toward in real life is honestly too horrific for me to write fic about it anymore. I hope I'll write other Sam/Steve fic in the future, but it's not going to be a road trip around America.
> 
> So this is the last of the stuff I already had written; I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for reading. I'll also include here two more tidbits. One is Tony's mix cd for Sam and Steve, because he is old: https://open.spotify.com/user/stillnotking/playlist/4i69vXVtrYfHpyr4qisTbU
> 
> And the other is the tail end of an op ed written by Jenn, with which I will leave you. I think you can guess which line I added recently:
>
>> We make the places where we live. Our lives owe something to the past, and if we build that into our buses and museums and songs and dinners and relationships, if we hold on to what is good, then those places become links not just to our history but to one another. It is up to us to build and rebuild the nation, to make it truly ours, those of us for whom America was never great. Sometimes that fight needs heroes. Sometimes we are the only heroes we get.
>> 
>> But don’t ask the Avengers. They’ve all gone to look for America. 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> _Jennifer Beech's forthcoming undergraduate thesis is on mixtape culture and social justice. This article is part of an exclusive series for Huffington Post called "Unsung Heroes: Mixtapes, Civil Rights, and the Lost Histories of Patriotism."_  
> 


End file.
